The Devil Rides Out

‘We should be mad to even think of it,’ said Simon jerkily. ‘It’s pretty useless for me to say I’m sorry, but I brought this whole trouble on you all and there’s only one thing to do, that’s obvious.’

‘For us to sit here like a lot of dummies while you go off to give yourself up at twelve o’clock, I suppose?’ Richard, who had just rejoined them, cut in acidly.

‘I have been expecting that, knowing Simon,’ the Duke observed. ‘Terrible as the consequences may be for him and although the idea of surrender makes my blood boil I must confess that I think he’s right, with certain modifications.’

‘Oh, isn’t there some other way?’ Marie Lou exclaimed desperately, catching at Simon’s hand. ‘It’s too awful that because of our own trouble we should even talk of sacrificing you.’

One of those rare smiles that made him such a lovable person lit Simon’s face. ‘Ner,’ he said softly, ‘it’s been my muddle from the beginning. I’m terribly grateful to you all for trying to get me out of it, but Mocata’s been too much for us, and I must throw my hand in now. It’s the only thing to do.’

‘It is my damned incompetence which has let us in for this,’ grunted the Duke. ‘I deserve to take your place, Simon, and I would—you know that—if it were the least use. The devil of it is that it’s you he wants, not me.’

Rex had been cutting thin slices from the ham and pouring out the tea. Richard took a welcome cup of his favourite Orange Pekoe from him and said firmly:

‘Stop talking nonsense, for God’s sake! Neither of you is to blame. After what we’ve all been through together in the past you did quite rightly to come here. Who should we look to for help in times of trouble if not each other? If I was in a real tight corner I shouldn’t hesitate to involve either of you—and I know that Marie Lou feels the same. This blow couldn’t possibly have been foreseen by anyone. It was just—well, call it an accident, and the responsibility for protecting Fleur was ours every bit as much as yours. Now let’s get down to what we mean to do.’

‘That’s decent of you, Richard.’ De Richleau tried to smile, knowing what it must have cost his friend to ease their feeling of guilt when he must be so desperately anxious about his child.

‘Damned decent,’ Simon echoed. ‘But all the same I’m going to keep the appointment Mocata’s made for me. It’s the only hope we’ve got.’

Richard stuck out his chin. ‘You’re not, old chap. You placed yourself in my hands by coming to my house, and I won’t have it. The business we went through last night scared me as much as anyone. I admit it; but because Greyeyes has proved right about Satanic manifestations, there is no reason for you all to lose your sense of proportion about what the evil powers can do. They have their limitations, just like anything else. Greyeyes admitted last night that they were based on natural laws, and this swine’s gone outside them. He’s operating now in a country that is strange to him. He confesses as much in his letter. You can see he is scared of our calling in the police, and that’s the very way we’re going to get him. You people seem to have lost your nerve.’

‘No,’ the Duke said sadly. ‘I haven’t lost my nerve, but look at it if you like on the basis which you suggest, Richard—that this is a perfectly normal kidnapping. Say Fleur were being held to ransom by a group of unscrupulous gangsters, such as operate in the States, the gang being in a position to know what is going on in your house. They have threatened to kill Fleur if you bring the police into the business. Now, would you be prepared to risk that in such circumstances?’

‘No, I should pay up, as most wretched parents seem to, on the off-chance that the gang gave me a square deal and I got the child back unharmed. But this is different. I’ll stake my oath that Mocata means to double-cross us anyhow. If it were only Simon that he wanted he might be prepared to let us have Fleur back in exchange. You seem to forget what Tanith told you. He doesn’t know that we know his intentions, but she was absolutely definite on three points. One, he means to do his damnedest to bring her back. Two, he will fail unless he makes the attempt in the next few days. Three, the only way that can be done is by performing a full Black Mass, including the sacrifice of a baptised child. Kidnappings take time to plan in a civilised country unless you want the police on your track. Mocata has succeeded in one where he thinks there is a fair chance of keeping the police out of it, and no one in their senses could suggest that he’s the sort of man who would run the risk of doing another just for the joy of keeping his word with us. It’s as clear as daylight that he is just keeping Fleur as bait to get hold of Simon and then he’ll do us down by killing the child in the end.’

De Richleau slit open a roll and slipped a slice of ham inside it. ‘Well,’ he said as he began to trim the ragged edges neatly, ‘it is for you and Marie Lou to decide. The prospect of sitting in this room for hours on end doing nothing is about the grimmest I’ve ever had to face in a pretty crowded lifetime. I would give most things I really value for a chance to have another cut at him. The only thing that deters me for one moment is the risk to Fleur.’

‘I know that well enough,’ Richard acknowledged, ‘but I am convinced our only chance of seeing her alive again is to call in the police, and trust to running him to earth before nightfall’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Simon shook his head, ‘I wouldn’t honestly, Richard. He’s certain to find out if we take steps against him. We shall waste hours here being questioned by the local bigwigs, and it’s a hundred to one against their being able to corner him in a single day. Fleur is safe at the moment—for God’s sake don’t make things worse than they are. I know the man and he’s as heartless as a snake. It’s signing Fleur’s death warrant to try and tackle him like this.’

Marie Lou listened to these conflicting arguments in miserable indecision. She was torn violently from side to side by each in turn. Simon spoke with such absolute conviction that it seemed certain Richard’s suggested intervention would precipitate her child’s death, and yet she felt, too, how right Richard was in his belief that Mocata was certain to double-cross them, and having trapped them into surrendering Simon, retain Fleur for this abominable sacrifice which Tanith had told them he was so anxious to make. The horns of dilemma seemed to join and form a vicious circle which went round and round in her aching head.

The others fell silent and Richard looked across at her. ‘Well, dearest, which is it to be?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she moaned. ‘Both sides seem right and yet the risk is so appalling either way.’

He laid his hand gently on her hair. ‘It’s beastly having to make such a decision, and if we were alone in this I wouldn’t dream of asking you. I’d do what I thought best myself unless you were dead against it, but as the others disagree with me so strongly what can I do but ask you to decide?’

Wringing her hands together in agonised distress at this horrible problem with which she was faced, Marie Lou looked desperately from side to side, then her glance fell on Rex. He was sitting hunched up in a dejected attitude on the far side of Tanith’s body, his eyes fixed in hopeless misery on the dead girl’s face.

‘Rex,’ she said hoarsely, ‘you haven’t said what you think yet. Both these alternatives seem equally ghastly to me. What do you advise?’

‘Eh?’ He looked up quickly. ‘It’s mighty difficult and I was just trying to figure it out. I hate the thought of doing nothing, waiting about when you’ve got a packet of trouble is just real hell to me, and I’d like to get after this bird with a gun. But Simon’s so certain that if we did it would be fatal to Fleur, and I guess the Duke thinks that way too. They both know him, you must remember, and Richard doesn’t, which is a point to them, but I’ve got a hunch that we are barking up the wrong tree, and that this is a case for what Greyeyes calls his masterly policy of inactivity. The old game of giving the enemy enough rope so he’ll hang himself in the end.

‘Any sort of compromise is all against my nature, but I reckon it’s the only policy that offers now. If we stay put here and carry out Mocata’s instructions to the letter, we’ll at least be satisfied in our minds that we are not bringing any fresh danger on Fleur. But let’s go that far and no farther. We all know Simon is willing enough to cash in his checks, but I don’t think we ought to let him. Instead, we’ll keep him here. That is going to force Mocata to scratch his head a whole heap. He’ll not do Fleur in before he’s had another cut at getting hold of Simon, so it will be up to him to make the next move in the game, and that may give us a fresh opening. The situation can’t be worse than it is at present, and when he shows his hand again, given a spot of luck, we might be able to ring the changes on him yet.’

De Richleau smiled, for the first time in days, it seemed. ‘My friend, I salute you,’ he said, with real feeling in his voice. ‘I am growing old, I think, or I should have thought of that myself. It is by far and away the most sensible thing that any of us has suggested yet.’

With a sigh of relief, Marie Lou moved over and, stooping down, kissed Rex on the cheek. ‘Rex, darling, bless you. In our trouble we’ve been forgetting about yours, and it is very wonderful that you should have thought of a real way out for us in the midst of your sorrow. I dreaded having to make that decision just now more than anything that I have had to do in my whole life.’

He smiled rather wanly. ‘That’s all right, darling. There’s nothing so mighty clever about it, but it gives us time, and you must try and comfort yourself with the thought that time and the angels are on our side.’

Even Richard’s frantic anxiety to set out immediately in search of his Fleur d’amour was overcome for the time being by Rex’s so obviously sensible suggestion. In his agitation he had eaten nothing yet, but now he sat down to cut some sandwiches, and set about persuading Marie Lou that she must eat the first of them in order to keep up her strength. Then he looked over at the Duke,

‘I left that note for Malin where he’s bound to see it—slipped it under his bedroom door, so we shan’t be disturbed here. Is there anything at all that we can do?’

‘Nothing, I fear, only possess ourselves with such patience as we can, but we’re all at about the end of our tether, so we ought to try and get some sleep. If Mocata makes some fresh move this evening it’s on the cards that we shall be up again all night.’

‘I’ll get some cushions,’ Simon volunteered. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in bringing used articles into this room now?’

‘None. You had better collect all the stuff you can and we’ll make up some temporary beds on the floor.’

Simon, Richard and Rex left the room and returned a few moments later with piles of cushions and all the rugs that they could find. They placed some fresh logs on the smouldering ashes of the fire and then set about laying out five makeshift resting-places.

When they had finished, Marie Lou allowed Richard to lead her over to one of them and tuck her up, although she protested that, exhausted though she as, she would never be able to sleep. The rest lay down, and then Richard switched out the light.

Full day had come at last, but it was of little use, for the range of vision was limited to about fifteen yards. The mist outside the windows seemed, if anything, denser than before, and it swirled and eddied in curling wreaths above the damp stones of the terrace, muffling the noises of the countryside and shutting out the light.

None of them felt that they would be able to sleep. Rex’s gnawing sorrow for Tanith preyed upon his mind. The others, racked with anxiety for Fleur, turned restlessly upon their cushions. Every now and then they heard Marie Lou give way to fits of sobbing as though her heart would break. But the stress of those terrible night hours and the emotions they had passed through since had exhausted them completely. Marie Lou’s bursts of sobbing became quieter and then ceased. Richard fell into an uneasy doze. De Richleau and Rex breathed evenly, sunk at last in a heavy sleep.

Hours later Marie Lou was dreaming that she was seated in an ancient library reading a big, old-fashioned book, the cover of which was soft and hairy like a wolf’s skin, and that as she read it a circle of iron was bound about her head. Then the scene changed. She was in the pentacle again, and that loathsome sack-like Thing was attacking Fleur. She awoke—and started up with a sudden scream of fear.

Her waking was little better than the nightmare when memory flooded back into her mind. Yet that too and the present only seemed other phases of the frightful dream; the comfortable library denuded of its furniture; Tanith’s dead body lying in the centre of the floor and the dimness of the room from those horrible fog banks shutting out the sunshine. They could not possibly be anything but figments of the imagination.

The men had roused at once, and crowded round her, shadowy figures in the uncertain light. De Richleau pressed the electric switch. They blinked a little, and looked at each other sleepily, then their eyes turned to the place where Simon had lain.

With one thought their glances shifted to the window and they knew that while they slept their friend had gone out, into that ghostly unnatural night, to keep his grim appointment.

CHAPTER XXX

OUT INTO THE FOG

It was Rex who noticed the chalk marks on the floor. He stepped over and saw that Simon, lacking pencil and paper, had used these means to leave them a short message. Slowly he deciphered the scribbled words and read them out:

‘Please don’t fuss or try to come after me. This is my muddle, so am keeping appointment. Do as Mocata has ordered. Am certain that is only chance of saving Fleur. Love to all. Simon.’

‘Aw, Hell!’ exclaimed Rex as he finished. ‘The dear heroic little sap has gone and put paid to my big idea. Mocata has got him and Fleur now on top of having killed Tanith. If you ask me we’re properly sunk.’

De Richleau groaned. ‘It is just like him. We ought to have guessed that he would do this.’

‘You’re right there,’ Richard agreed sadly. ‘I’ve known him longer than any of you, and I did my damnedest to prevent him sacrificing himself for nothing, but it seems to me he’s only done the very thing you said he should.’

‘That’s not quite fair,’ the Duke protested mildly. ‘I only said I thought it right that he should with certain modifications. I had it in my mind that we might follow him at a distance. We should have arrived at the rendezvous before Mocata could have known that we had left this place, and we might have pulled something off. As it was, I thought Rex’s idea so much better that I abandoned mine.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Richard apologised huskily. ‘But Simon’s my oldest friend you know, and this on top of all the rest––’

‘Do you—do you think the poor sweet is right, and that his having given himself up will be of any use?’ whispered Marie Lou.

Richard shrugged despondently. ‘Not the least, dearest. I hate to seem ungracious, and you all know how devoted I am to Simon, but in his anxiety to do the right thing he’s handed Mocata our only decent card. We can sit here till Doomsday, but there’s no chance now of his making any fresh move which might give us a new opening. We’ve wasted the Lord knows how many precious hours, and we’re in a worse hole than we were before. I’m going to carry out my original intention and get on to the police.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Rex caught him by the arm. ‘It’ll only mean our wasting further time in spilling long dispositions to a bunch of cops, and you’re all wrong about our not having made anything on the new deal. We’ve had a sleep which we needed mighty badly, and we’ve lulled Mocata into a false sense of security. Just because we’ve remained put here all morning like he said and Simon’s come over with the goods, he’ll think he’s sitting pretty now and maybe let up on his supervision stunt. Let’s cut out bothering with the police and get after him ourselves this minute.’

Marie Lou shivered slightly and then nodded. ‘Rex is right, you know. Mocata has got what he wants now, so it is very unlikely that he is troubling to keep us under observation any more, but how do you propose to try and find him?’

‘We will go straight to Paris,’ De Richleau announced, with a display of his old form. ‘You remember Tanith told us that by tonight he would be there holding a conversation with a man who had lost the upper portion of his left ear. That is Castelnau, the banker, I am certain, so the thing for us to do is to make for Paris and hunt him out.’

‘How do you figure on getting there?’ asked the practical Rex.

‘By plane, of course. Mocata is obviously travelling that way or he could never get there by tonight. Richard must take us in his four-seater, and if Mocata has to motor all the way to Croydon before he can make a start, we’ll be there before him. Is your plane in commission, Richard?’

‘Yes, the plane’s all right. It’s in the hangar at the bottom of the meadow, and when I took her out three days ago she was running perfectly. I don’t much like the look of this fog, though, although, of course, it’s probably only a ground mist.’

They all glanced out of the window again. The grey murk still hung over the terrace, shutting out the view of the Botticelli garden where, on this early May morning, the polyanthus and forget-me-nots and daffodils, shedding their green cocoons, were bursting into colourful life.

‘Let’s go,’ said Rex, impatiently. ‘De Richleau’s right. You’d best get some clothes on, then we’ll beat it for Paris the second you’re fit.’

The rest followed him out into the hall and upstairs to the rooms above. The house was silent and seemingly deserted. The servants were obviously taking Richard’s orders in the most literal sense and, released for once from their daily tasks, enjoying an unexpected holiday in their own quarters.

Marie Lou looked into the nursery and almost broke down again for a moment as she once more saw the empty cot, but she hurried past it to the nurse’s bedroom and found the woman still sleeping soundly.

In Richard’s dressing-room the men made hasty preparations. Rex was clad in the easy lounge suit which he had put on in De Richleau’s flat, but Richard and the Duke were still in pyjamas. When they were dressed Richard fitted the others out as well as he could with top clothes for their journey. The Duke was easy, being only a little taller than himself, and a big double overcoat was found for Rex, into which he managed to scramble despite the breadth of his enormous shoulders. Marie Lou joined them a few moments later, clad in her breeches and leather flying coat, which she always used whenever she went up with Richard..

Downstairs again, they paused in the library to make another hurried meal. Then the door was locked, and after casting a last unhappy glance at Tanith’s body, which remained unaltered in appearance, Rex led the way out on the terrace.

They walked quickly down the gravel path beside the Botticelli border, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the all pervading mist—through Marie Lou’s own garden, with its long herbaceous borders, and past the old sundial—round the quadrangles of tessellated pavement which fell in a succession of little terraces to the pond garden, with its water lilies, and so to the meadow beyond.

When they reached the hangar Richard and Rex ran out the plane and got it in order for the flight. De Richleau stood watching their operations with Marie Lou beside him, both of them fretting a little at the necessary delay, since now that the vital decision had been taken every member of the party was impatient to set out.

They settled themselves in the comfortable four-seater. Rex swung the propeller, well accustomed to the ways of aeroplanes, and the engine purred upon a low steady note. He watched it for a second, and then, as he scrambled aboard, there came the long conventional cry : ‘All set.’

The plane moved slowly forward into the dank mist. The hedges and trees on either side were shut out by banks of fog, but Richard knew the ground so well that he felt confident of judging his distance and direction. He taxied over the even grass of the long field, and turned to rise. The plane lifted, touched ground again gently twice, and they were off.

As they left the earth a new feeling came over Richard. He was passionately fond of flying, and it always filled him with exhilaration, but this was different. It was as though he had suddenly come out into the daylight after having been walking down a long, dark, smoky tunnel for many hours. At long intervals there had been brightly lit recesses in the sides of it where figures stood like tableaux at a wax-works show. The slug-like Thing and Fleur; Rex standing at the window with Tanith in his arms; Simon whispering something to the Duke; Marie Lou’s face as she stood with her hand resting on the rail of Fleur’s empty cot, and a dozen others. The rest of that strange journey he seemed to have made, consisted of long periods of blankness only punctuated by little cries of fear and scraps of reiterated argument, the purpose of which he could no longer remember. Now—his brain was clear again, and he settled himself with new purpose to handle the plane with all his skill.

In those few moments they had risen clear of the ground mist and were soaring upwards into the blue above. As De Richleau looked down he saw a very curious thing. Not only was the fog that had hemmed them in local, but it seemed to be concentrated entirely upon Cardinals Folly. He could just make out the chimneys of the house rising in its centre, as from a grey sea, and from the buildings it spread out in a circular formation for half a mile or so on every side, hiding the gardens from his view and obscuring the meadows between the house and the village, but beyond, all was clear in the brilliant sunshine of the early summer afternoon.

Rex was beside Richard in the cockpit. Automatically he had taken on the job of navigator, and, like Richard, his brain numbed before with misery, had started to function properly again directly he set to busying himself with the maps and scales.

The Duke, sitting in the body of the machine with Marie Lou, felt that there was nothing he could say to comfort her, but he took her hand in his and held it between his own. From his quick gesture she felt again his intense distress that he should ever have been the means of bringing her this terrible unhappiness, so, to distract his thoughts, she put her mouth right up against his ear and told him of the odd dream she had had; about reading the old book. He gave her a curious glance and began to shout back at her.

She could not catch all he said owing to the noise of the engine, but enough to tell that he was intensely interested. He seemed to think that she had been dreaming of the famous Red Book of Appin, a wonderful treatise on Magic owned by the Stewards of Invernahyle, who were now extinct. The book had been lost and not heard of for more than a hundred years, but her description of it, and the legend that it might only be read with understanding by those who wore a circlet of iron above their brow made him insistent that it must be this which she had seen in her dream. He pressed her to try and remember if she had understood any portion of it.

After some trouble she managed to convey to him that she had read one sentence on a faded vellum page, and that although the lettering was quite different from anything which she had ever seen before, she understood it at the time, but could not recall the meaning now. Then as talking was so difficult, they fell silent.

At a hundred miles an hour the plane soared above the English counties, but they took little heed of the fields and hedges, woods and hills, which fled so swiftly beneath them. Somehow they seemed to have stepped out of their old life altogether. Time no longer existed for them, only the will to arrive at their destination in order to be active once again. All their thoughts were concentrated now upon Paris and the man who had lost half his ear. Would he be there? Could they find him if he was? And would they arrive before Mocata?

They passed over the Northern end of the English Channel almost without noticing it; Marie Lou felt a little shock when the plane banked steeply and Richard brought it circling down.

The sun was sinking behind great banks of cloud and, as the plane tilted, she saw that a thick mist lay below them in which glowed dull patches of half-obscured light. Richard and Rex knew them, however, to be the fog flares of the Le Bourget landing ground.

A few seconds more and they had seen the last of the sunset. A thin greyness closed about them. One of the flares showed bright, and the plane bounded along the earth until Richard brought it to a standstill.

Almost in a daze they answered the. questions of the officers at the airport and passed the Customs, secured a fast-looking taxi and, packed inside it, were heading for the centre of Paris.

As they ran through the streets, with the familiar high-pitched note of the taxi’s horn continually sounding and the subtle smell of the epiceries in their nostrils—the very scent of Paris—they noticed half-unconsciously that night had fallen once more.

Here and there the electric sky-signs on the tall buildings, advertising Savan Cadum or Byrrh, glowed dully through the murk, and the lights of the cafes illuminated little spaces of the boulevards through which they passed, throwing up the figures that sat sipping their aperitifs at the marble-topped tables and dappling the young green of the stunted trees that lined the pavements.

None of them spoke as the taxi swerved and rushed, seeking every opportunity to nose its way through the traffic. Only Rex leant forward once, soon after they left the aerodrome, and murmured: ‘I told him the Ritz. We’ll be able to hunt up this bird’s address when we get there.’

They ran past the Opera, down the Boulevard de la Madeleine, and turned left into the Place Vandome. The cab pulled up with a jerk. A liveried porter hurried forward to fling open the door, and they scrambled out.

‘Pay him off, with a good tip,’ Rex ordered the hotel servant. ‘I’ll see-yer-later, inside.’ Then he led the way into the hotel.

One of the under-managers at the bureau recognised him and came hurrying forward with a welcoming smile.

‘Monsieur Van Ryn, what a pleasure! You require accommodation for your party? How many rooms do you desire? I hope that you will stay with us some time.’

‘Two single rooms and one double, with bathrooms, and we’d best have a sitting-room on the same floor,’ replied Rex curtly. ‘How long we’ll be staying I can’t say. I’ve got urgent business to attend to this trip. Do you happen to know a banker named Castelnau—elderly man, grey-haired, with a hatchet face, who’s had a slice taken out of his left ear?’

‘Mais oui, monsieur. He lunches here frequently.’

‘Good. D’you know where he lives?’

‘For the moment, no, but I will ascertain. You permit?’ The manager moved briskly away and disappeared into the office. A few moments later he returned with a Paris telephone directory open in his hand.

This will be it, monsieur, I think, Monsieur Laurent Castelnau, 72, Maison Rambouillet, Parc Monceau. That is a block of flats. Do you wish to telephone his apartment?’

‘Sure,’ Rex nodded. ‘Call him right away, please.’ Then as the Frenchman hurried off, he nodded quietly to the Duke: ‘Best leave this to me. I’ve got a hunch how to fix him.’

‘Go ahead,’ the Duke acquiesced. He had been keeping well in the background, and now he smiled a little unhappily as he went on in a low voice:

‘How I love Paris. The smell and the sight and the sound of it. I have not been back here for fifteen years. The Government have never forgiven me for the part that I played in the Royalist rising which took place in the 90’s. I was young then. How long ago it all seems now. But never since have I dared to venture back to France, except a few times secretly on the most urgent business. I believe the authorities would still put me into some miserable fortress if they discovered me on French soil.’

‘Oh, Greyeyes, dear! You ought never to have come.’ Marie Lou turned to him impulsively. ‘With all these awful things happening I had forgotten. Somehow I always think of you really as an Englishman, not as a French exile who lives in England as the next best thing. It would be terrible if you were arrested and tried as a political offender after all these years.’

He shrugged and smiled again. ‘Don’t worry, Princess. The authorities have almost forgotten my existence, I expect, and the only risk I run is in knowing so many people who constantly travel through France. If someone recognised me and spoke my name too loud it is just possible that it might strike a chord in some police spy’s memory, but beyond that there is very little danger.’

They sat down at a little table in the lounge while Rex was telephoning. When he rejoined them he nodded cheerfully.

‘We’re in luck, and Lord knows we need it. I spoke to Castelnau himself, used the name of my old man’s firm — The Chesapeake Banking and Trust Corporation—and spun a yarn that he had sent me over on a special mission to Europe connected with the franc. Told him the whole thing was far too hush-hush for me to make a date to see him at his office tomorrow morning where his clerks might recognise me as the representative of an American banking house, and that I must see him tonight privately. He hedged a bit until I put it to him that I had power to deal in real big figures, and he fell for that like a sucker. He couldn’t see me yet though, because he’s busy putting on his party frock for some official banquet, but he figures he’ll be back at the apartment round about ten o’clock, so I said I’d be along to state my business then.’

‘To fill in the time we might go upstairs and have bath,’ remarked Richard, feeling his bristly chin. ‘Then we’d better go out and dine somewhere, though God knows, I’ve never felt less like food in my life.’

‘All right,’ De Richleau agreed, ‘only let us go somewhere quiet for dinner. If we go to one of the smart places it will add to the chance of my running into somebody that I know.’

‘What about Le Vert Galant?’ Richard suggested. ‘It’s on the right bank down at La Cite, old-fashioned, quiet, but excellent food, and you’re unlikely to see the sort of people that we know there in the evening.’

‘Is that still running?’ De Richleau smiled. ‘Then let us go there by all means. It’s just the place.’ And they moved over towards the lift.

Upstairs they bathed and tidied themselves, but almost automatically, for their uneasy sleep that morning seemed to have done little to recruit their lowered energy. As though still in a bad dream, Marie Lou undressed, and dressed again, while Richard moved about the room, for once apparently unconscious of her presence, silently and mechanically eliminating the traces of the journey. Then he submitted to the ministrations of the hotel barber with one curt order, that the man was to shave him and not to talk.

Rex finished first and wandered into their room, where he sat uncomfortably perched upon a corner of the bed, but he stared at his large feet the whole time that he sat there and did not make any effort whatever at conversation.

De Richleau joined them shortly afterwards, and Marie Lou, rousing for a moment from her abject misery, noted with a little start how spick and span he had become again, after the attentions of the barber and his bath. He had produced one of his long Hoyos, and appeared to be smoking it with quiet enjoyment. Richard and Rex, despite the removal of their incipient beards, still looked woebegone and haggard, as though they had not slept for days, and were almost contemplating suicide, but the Duke still maintained his air of the great gentleman for whose pleasure and satisfaction this whole existence is ordered.

Actually his appearance was no more than a mask with which long habit had accustomed him to disguise his emotions, and at heart he was racked by an anxiety equal to that of any of the others. He was suppressing his impatience to get hold of Castelnau only by a supreme effort; his feet itched to be on the move, and his fingers to be on the throat of the adversary; but as he came into the room he smiled round at them, kissed Marie Lou’s hand with his usual gallantry, and presented a huge bunch of white violets to her.

‘A few flowers, Princess, for your room.’

Marie Lou took them without a word; the tears brimming in her eyes spoke her thanks that he should have thought of such a thing at such a time, and his perfect naturalness served to steady them all a little as they went down afterwards in the lift. Rex changed some money at the caisse, and they went out into the night again.

‘Queer—isn’t it,’ remarked Richard as he looked out of the taxi window at the fogbound streets. ‘I’ve always said what fun it is to make a surprise visit for a couple of nights to Paris—in May. It’s like stealing in on summer in advance—tea in the open at Armenonville—a drive to Fontainbleu, with the forest at its very best—and all that. I never thought I might come to Paris one May like this.’

‘I’ve a feeling there’s something wrong about it—or us,’ said Rex slowly. ‘Those servants in the hotel back there didn’t seem any more natural than the weather to me. It was as though I was watching them act in some kind of a play.’

De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes, I felt the same, and I believe Mocata is responsible. Perhaps he surrounded Cardinals Folly with a strong atmospheric force, and we have brought the vibrations of it with us, or he may be interfering with our auras in some way. I’m only guessing, of course, and can’t possibly explain it.’

At the Vert Galant De Richleau ordered dinner without reference to any of them. He was a great gourmet, and knew from past experience the dishes that pleased them best, but as a meal it was one of the most dismal failures which it had ever been his misfortune to witness.

He knew and they knew that his apparent preoccupation with food and wine was nothing but a bluff; an attempt to smother their anxiety and occupy their thoughts until the time to go to Castelnau’s apartment should arrive. The cooking was excellent, the service everything that one could desire, and the cellar of Le Vert Galant provided wines to which even De Richleau’s critical taste gave full approval, but their hearts were not in the business.

They toyed with the Lobster Cardinal, sent away the Pauillac Lamb untasted, and drank the wines as a beverage to steady their nerves rather than with the consideration and pleasure which they deserved.

The fat maitre d’hotel supervised the service of each course himself, and it passed his understanding how these three men and the beautiful little lady could show so little appreciation. With hands clasped upon his large stomach, he stood before the Duke and murmured his distress that the dishes they had ordered should not appear to please them, but the Duke waved him away, even summoning up a little smile to assure him that it was no fault of the restaurant and only their unfortunate lack of appetite.

Throughout the meal De Richleau talked unceasingly. He was a born raconteur, and ordinarily, with his charm and wit, could hold any audience enthralled. Tonight, despite his own anxiety, he made a supreme attempt to lift the burden from the shoulders of his friends by exploiting every avenue of memory and conversation, but never in his life had his efforts met with such a cold reception. In vain he attempted to divert their thoughts, laughing a little to himself, as he reached the denouement of each of his stories, and hoping against hope that he might raise a smile in those three anxious faces that faced him across the table.

For Marie Lou the meal was just another phase of that horrible nightmare through which she had been passing since the early hours of the morning. Mechanically she sampled the dishes which were put before her, but each one seemed to taste the same, and after a few mouthfuls she laid down her fork, submitting miserably to the frantic, gnawing thoughts which pervaded her whole being.

Richard said nothing, ate little, and drank heavily. He was in that state when he knew quite well that it was impossible for him to drink too much. Great happiness or great distress has that effect upon certain men, and he was one of them. Every other minute he glanced at the clock on the wall, as it slowly registered the passage of time until they could set forth once more on their attempt to save his daughter.

There was still half an hour to go when the fruit and brandy were placed upon the table, and then at last De Richleau surrendered.

‘I’ve been talking utter nonsense all through dinner,’ he confessed gravely; ‘only to keep my thoughts off this wretched business, you understand. But now the time has come when we can speak of it again with some advantage. What do you intend to do, Rex, when you see this man?’

Marie Lou lifted her eyes from the untasted grapes which lay upon her plate. ‘You’ve been splendid, Greyeyes, dear. I haven’t been listening to you really, but a sentence here and there has been just enough to take my mind off a picture of the worst that may happen, which keeps haunting me.’

He smiled across at her gratefully. ‘I’m glad of that. It’s the least that I could try to do. But come now, Rex, let’s hear your plan.’

‘I’ve hardly got one,’ Rex confessed, shrugging his great shoulders. ‘We know he’ll see me, and that’s as far as I have figured it out. I presume it’ll boil down to my jumping on him after a pretty short discussion and threatening to gouge out his eyeballs with my hands unless he’s prepared to come clean with everything he knows about Mocata.’

De Richleau shook his head. ‘That is roughly the idea, of course, but there are certain to be servants in the flat, and we must arrange it that you have a free field for your party.’

‘Can’t you take us along with you?’ Richard suggested. ‘Say that we’re privately interested in this deal you’re putting up. If only the three of us can get inside that flat God help anybody who tries to stop us forcing him to talk.’

‘Sure,’ Rex agreed. ‘I see no sort of objection to that. We can park Marie Lou at the Ritz, on our way, before we beat this fellow up.’

‘No!’ Marie Lou gave a sudden dogged shake of her head. ‘I am coming with you. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, and I will keep out of the way if there is any trouble. You cannot ask me to go back to the hotel and sit there on my own while you are trying to obtain news of Fleur. I should go mad and fling myself out of the window. I’ve got to come, so please don’t argue about it.’

Richard took her hand and caressed it softly. ‘Of course you shall, my sweet. It would be better, perhaps, for you not to be with us when we see Castelnau, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t wait for us in his hall.’

De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes, in the circumstances it is impossible to leave Marie Lou behind, but about these servants—did you bring that gun that you had last night with you?’

‘Yes, I brought it through the Customs in my hip pocket, and it’s fully loaded.’

‘Right. Then if necessary you can use it to intimidate the servants while Rex and I tackle Castelnau. It is a quarter to. Shall we go?’

Rex sent for the bill and paid it, leaving a liberal tip which soothed the dignity of the injured maitre d’hotel, then they filed out of the restaurant.

‘Maison Rambouillet, Parc Monceau,’ De Richleau told the driver sharply as they climbed into the taxi, and not a word was spoken until the cab drew up before a palatial block of modern flats, facing on to the little green park where the children of the rich in Paris take their morning airing.

‘Monsieur Castelnau?’ the Duke inquired of the concierge.

‘This way, monsieur,’ the man led them through a spacious stone-faced hall to the lift.

It shot up to the fifth floor, and as he opened the gates, the concierge pointed to a door upon the right.

‘Number Seventy-two,’ he said quietly. ‘I think Monsieur Castelnau has just come in.’

The gates clanged behind them, and the lift flashed silently down again to the ground floor. De Richleau gave Rex a swift glance and, stepping towards the door of Number Seventy-two, pressed the bell.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MAN WITH THE JAGGED EAR

The tall, elaborately carved door was opened by a bald, elderly manservant in a black alpaca coat. Rex gave his name, and the servant looked past him with dark, inquiring eyes at the others.

‘These are friends of mine, who’re seeing Monsieur Castelnau on the same business,’ Rex said abruptly, stepping into the long, narrow hall. ‘Is he in?’

‘Yes, monsieur, and he is expecting you. This way, if you please.’

Marie Lou perched herself on a high couch of Cordova leather, while the other three followed the back of the alpaca jacket down the corridor. Another tall, carved door was thrown open, and they entered a wide, dimly-lit salon, furnished in the old style of French elegance: gilt ormolu, tapestries, bric-a-brac, and a painted ceiling where cupids disported themselves among roseate flowers.

Castelnau stood, cold, thin, angular and hatchet-faced, with his back to a large porcelain stove. He was dressed in the clothes which he had worn at the banquet. The wide, watered silk ribbon with the garish colours of some foreign order cut across his shirt front and a number of decorations were pinned to the lapel of his evening coat.

‘Monsieur Van Ryn.’ He barely touched Rex’s hand with his cold fingers and went on in his own language. ‘It is a pleasure to receive you. I know your house well by reputation, and from time to time in the past my own firm has had some dealings with yours.’ Then he glanced at the others sharply. ‘The gentlemen are, I assume, associated with you in this business?’

‘They are.’ Rex introduced them briefly. ‘The Duke de Richleau — Mr. Richard Eaton.’

Castelnau’s eyebrows lifted a fraction as he studied the Duke’s face with new interest. ‘Of course,’ he murmured. ‘Monsieur le Duc must pardon me if I did not recognise him at first.

It is many years since we have met, and I was under the impression that he had never found the air of Paris good for him; but perhaps I am indiscreet to make any reference to that old trouble.’

‘The business which has brought me is urgent, monsieur,’ De Richleau replied suavely. ‘Therefore I elected to ignore the ban which a Government of bourgeois and socialists placed upon me.’

‘A grave step, monsieur, since the police of France have a notoriously long memory. Particularly at the present time when the Government has cause to regard all politicals who are not of its party with suspicion. However,’ the banker bowed slightly, ‘that, of course, is your own affair entirely. Be seated, gentlemen. I am at your service.’

None of the three accepted the proffered invitation, and Rex said abruptly: ‘The bullion deal I spoke of when I called you on the telephone was only an excuse to secure this interview. The three of us have come here tonight because we know that you are associated with Mocata.’

The Frenchman stared at him in blank surprise and was just about to burst into angry protest when Rex hurried on. ‘It’ll cut no ice to deny it. We know too much. The night before last we saw you at that joint in Chilbury, and afterwards with the rest of those filthy swine doing the devil’s business on Salisbury Plain. You’re a Satanist, and you’re going to tell us all you know about your leader.’

Castelnau’s dark eyes glittered dangerously in his long, white face. They shifted with a sudden furtive glance towards an open escritoire.

Before he could move, Richard’s voice came quiet but steely, ‘Stay where you are. I’ve got you covered, and I’ll shoot you like a dog if you flicker an eyelid.’

De Richleau caught the banker’s glance, and with his quick, cat-like step had reached the ornate desk. He pulled out a few drawers, and then found the weapon that he felt certain must be there. It was a tiny .2 pistol, but deadly enough. Having assured himself that it was loaded, he pointed it at the Satanist. ‘Now,’ he said, icily, ‘are you prepared to talk, or must I make you?’

Castelnau shrugged, then looked down at his feet. ‘You cannot make me,’ he replied with a quiet confidence, ‘but if you tell me what you wish to know, I may possibly give you the information you require in order to get rid of you.’

‘First, what do you know of Mocata’s history?’

‘Very little, but sufficient to assure you that you are exceedingly ill-advised if, as it appears, you intend to pit yourself against him.’

‘To hell with that!’ Rex snapped angrily; ‘get on with the story.’

‘Just as you wish. It is the Canon Damien Mocata to whom you refer, of course. When he was younger he was an officiating priest at some church in Lyons, I believe. He was always a difficult person, and his intellectual gifts made him a thorn in the sides of his superiors. Then there was some scandal and he left the church; but long before that he had become an occultist of exceptional powers. I met him some years ago and became interested in his operations. Your apparent disapproval of them does not distress me in the least. I find their theory an exceptionally interesting study, and their practice of the greatest assistance in governing my business transactions. Mocata lives in Paris for a good portion of the year, and I see him from time to time socially in addition to our meetings for esoteric purposes. I think that is all that I can tell you.’

‘When did you see him last?’ asked the Duke.

‘At Chilbury two nights ago, when we gathered again after the break-up of our meeting. I suppose you were responsible for that?’ Castelnau’s thin lips broke into a ghost of a smile. ‘If so, believe me, you will pay for it.’

‘You have not seen him then today—this evening?’

‘No, I did not even know that he had returned to Paris.’ There was a ring in the banker’s voice which made it difficult for his questioners to doubt that he was telling them the truth.

‘Where does he live when he is in Paris?’ the Duke inquired.

‘I do not know. I have visited him at many places. Often he stays with various friends, who are also interested in his practices, but he has no permanent address. The people with whom he was staying last left Paris some months ago for the Argentine, so I have no idea where you are likely to find him now.’

‘Where do you meet him when these Satanic gatherings take place?’

‘I am sorry, but I cannot tell you.’ The Frenchman’s voice was firm.

De Richleau padded softly forward and thrust the little pistol into Castelnau’s ribs, just under his heart. ‘I am afraid you’ve got to,’ he purred silkily. ‘The matter that we are engaged upon is urgent.’

The banker held his ground, and to outward appearances remained unruffled at the threat. ‘It is no good,’ he said quietly, ‘I cannot do it, even if you intend to murder me. Each one of us goes into a self-induced hypnotic trance before proceeding to these meetings, and wakes upon his arrival. In my conscious state I have no idea how I get there; so this apache attitude of yours is completely useless.’

‘I see.’ De Richleau nodded slowly and withdrew the automatic. ‘However, you are going to tell me just the same, because it happens that I am something of a hypnotist. I shall put you under now, and we shall proceed to follow all the stages of your unconscious journey.’

For the first time Castelnau’s face showed a trace of fear.

‘You can’t,’ he muttered quickly. ‘I won’t let you.’

De Richleau shrugged. ‘Your opposition will make it slightly more difficult, but I shall do it, nevertheless. However, as it may take some time, we will make fresh arrangements in order to ensure that we are not disturbed. Press the bell, and when your servant comes, give him definite instructions that as we shall be engaged in a long conference, upon no pretext whatsoever are you to be disturbed.’

‘And if I refuse?’ Castelnau’s dark eyes suddenly flashed rebellion.

‘Then you will never live again to give another order. The affair we are engaged upon is desperate, and whatever the consequences may be, I shall shoot you like the rat you are. Now ring.’ De Richleau put the pistol in his pocket but still held the banker covered, and after a moment’s hesitation Castelnau pressed the bell.

‘You, Richard,’ the Duke said in a sharp whisper, ‘will leave us when the servant has taken his instructions. Wait for us with Marie Lou in the entrance hall. You have your gun. Prevent anyone leaving the apartment until we have finished. Open the door to anyone who rings yourself, and if Mocata arrives, as he may at any moment, don’t argue—shoot. I take all responsibility.’

‘I am only waiting for the chance,’ said Richard grimly, just as the servant entered.

Castelnau gave his orders in an even voice, with one eye upon the Duke’s pocket, then Richard, in his normal voice, remarked casually:

‘Well, since the matter is confidential, I had better wait outside with my wife until you are through,’ and followed the elderly alpaca-coated man out into the hall.

‘Rex,’ De Richleau lost not an instant once the door was closed. ‘Take that telephone receiver off its stand so that we are not interrupted by any calls. And you,’ he turned to the banker, ‘sit down in that chair.’

‘I won’t!’ exclaimed Castelnau furiously. ‘This is abominable. You invade my apartment like brigands. I give you such information as I can, but what you are about to do will bring me into danger, and I refuse—I refuse, I tell you.’

‘I shall neither argue with you nor kill you,’ De Richleau answered frigidly. ‘You are too valuable to me alive. Rex, knock him out!’

Castelnau swung round and threw up his arms in a gesture of defence, but Rex broke through his guard. The young American’s mighty fist caught him on the side of the jaw and he crumpled up, a still heap on his own hearth-rug.

When the banker came to he found himself sitting in a straight chair; his hands were lashed to the back and his ankles to the legs with the curtain cords. His head ached abominably and he saw De Richleau standing opposite to him, smiling relentlessly down int6 his face.

‘Now,’ said the Duke, ‘look into my eyes. The sooner we get this business over the sooner you will be able to get to bed and nurse your sore head. I am about to place you under, and you are going to tell us what you do when you go to these Satanic meetings.’

For answer Castelnau quickly closed his eyes and lowered his head on to his chest, resisting De Richleau’s powerful suggestion with all the force of his will.

‘This doesn’t look to me as though it’s going to be any too easy,’ Rex muttered dubiously. ‘I’ve always thought that it was impossible to hypnotise people if they were unwilling. You’d better let me put the half-Nelson on him until he becomes more amenable and sees reason.’

‘That might make him agree verbally,’ De Richleau replied, ‘but it won’t stop him lying to us afterwards, and it is quite possible to hypnotise people against their will. It is often done to lunatics in asylums. Get behind him now, hold back his head and lift his eyelids with your fingers so that he cannot close them. We’ve got to find out about this place. It is our only hope of getting on to Mocata.’

Rex did as he was bid. The Duke stood before the chair, his steel-grey eyes fastened without a flicker upon those of the unwilling Satanist.

Time passed, and every now and then De Richleau’s voice broke the silence of the quiet, dimly-lit room. ‘You are tired now, you will sleep. I command you.’ But all his efforts were unavailing. The Satanist sat there rigid and determined not to succumb.

The ormolu clock upon the mantelpiece ticked with a steady, monotonous note, until Rex was filled with the mad desire to throw something at it. The hands crawled round the white enamelled dial; its silvery chime rang out, marking the hours eleven, twelve, one. Still the Frenchman endured De Richleau’s steady gaze. He knew that they were expecting Mocata to arrive at his apartment. Mocata was immensely powerful. If only he could hold out until then the whole position might be saved. With a fixed determination not to give in, his eyelids held back by Rex’s forefingers, he stared blankly at De Richleau’s chin.

Outside, on the sofa of Cordova leather, Richard and Marie Lou sat side by side. It seemed to her again that she must be dreaming. The whole fantastic business of this flight to Paris and their dinner at the Vert Galant had been utterly unreal. It could not be real now that Mocata was somewhere in this city preparing to kill her darling Fleur in some ungodly rite, while she sat there with Richard in that strange, silent apartment and the night hours laboured on.

She thought that she slept a little, but she was not certain. Ever since she had fainted in the pentacle and come to with the sensation that she was above Cardinals Folly, floating in the soundless ether, all her movements had been automatic and her vision of their doings distorted, so that whole sections of time were blotted out from her mind, and only these glimpses of strange places and faces seemed to register.

The black-coated servant appeared once at the far end of the corridor, but seeing them still there, disappeared again.

Almost the whole of that long wait Richard sat with his eyes glued to the front door, his hand clasped ready on the pistol in his pocket, expecting the ring that would announce Mocata’s arrival.

He too felt that somehow this person, grown desperate from an unbearable injury and lusting with the desire to kill, regardless of laws and consequences, could not possibly be himself.

With every movement that he made he expected to wake and find himself safely in bed at Cardinals Folly, with Marie Lou snuggled down against him and Fleur peacefully asleep only a few doors away.

Had he wholly believed that Fleur had been taken from him and that he was never to see her again, he could not possibly have endured those dreary hours of enforced idleness while the Duke battled with Castelnau. He would have been forced to interrupt them or at least leave his post to watch their proceedings, for his inactivity would have become unbearable.

In the richly furnished salon, Rex and the Duke continued their long-sustained effort without a second’s intermission. The clock struck two, and as Rex stood behind the Frenchman’s chair, shifting his weight from foot to foot now and then, he seemed at times to drop off into a sort of half-sleep where he stood.

At last, a little after two, he was roused to a fresh attention by a sudden sob breaking from the dry lips of the banker.

‘I will not let you, I will not,’ he cried hysterically, and then began to struggle violently with the curtain cords that tied him to the chair.

‘You will,’ De Richleau told him firmly, the pupils of his grey eyes now distended and gleaming with an unnatural light.

Castelnau suddenly ceased to struggle; a cold sweat broke out on his bony forehead, and his head sagged on his neck, but Rex held it firmly and continued to press back his eyelids so that it was impossible for him to escape the Duke’s relentless stare.

He began to sob then, like a child who is being beaten, and at last De Richleau knew that he had broken the Frenchman’s will. In another ten minutes Rex was able to remove his fingers from the banker’s eyelids for he no longer had the power to close them, but sat there gazing at De Richleau with an imbecile glare.

In a low voice the Duke began to question him and, after one last feeble effort at resistance, it all came out. The meeting place was in a cellar below a deserted warehouse on the banks of the Seine at Asnieres. They secured full directions as to the way to reach it and how to get into it when they arrived.

As Castelnau answered the last question, De Richleau glanced at the clock. ‘Three and a quarter hours,’ he said with a sigh of weariness. ‘Still, it might well have taken longer in a case like this.’

‘What’ll we do with him?’ Rex motioned towards the Frenchman who, with his head fallen forward on his chest, was now sound asleep.

‘Leave him there,’ answered the Duke abruptly. ‘The servants will find him in the morning, and he’s so exhausted that he will sleep until then. But stuff your handkerchief in his mouth just in case he wakes and tries to make any trouble for us. Be quick!’

Castelnau did not even blink an eyelid as Rex gagged him. They left him there and hurried out to the others.

‘Come on!’ cried the Duke.

‘What about Mocata?’ Richard asked. ‘If we leave here we may miss him.’

‘We must chance that’ De Richleau pulled open the door and made for the stairs.

As they dashed down the long flights he flung over his shoulder: ‘Tanith may have been wrong. Messages from the astral plane are often unreliable about time. As it does not exist there, they have difficulty in judging it. She may have seen him here a week hence or in the past even. It’s so late now that I doubt if he will turn up tonight. Anyhow, we got out of Castelnau the place where he’s most likely to be—and God knows what he may be doing if he is there. We’ve got to hurry!’ They fled after him out of the silent building.

Round the corner they managed to pick up a taxi and, at the promise of a big tip, the man got every ounce out of his engine as he whirled the four harassed-looking people away through the murky streets up towards the Boulevard de Clichy. Topping the hill, they descended again towards the Seine, crossed the river and entered Asnieres.

In that outlying slum of Paris with its wharves and warehouses, narrow, sordid-looking streets and dimly-lit passages, there was little movement at that hour of the morning. They paid off the taxi outside a closed cafe which faced upon a dirty-looking square. A market wagon rumbled past with its driver huddled on his seat above the horses, his cape drawn close to protect him from the damp mist rising from the river. The bedraggled figure of a woman was huddled upon the steps of a shop with ‘Tabac’ in faded blue letters above it, but otherwise there was no sign of life.

Turning up the collars of their coats and shivering afresh from the damp chill of the drifting fog, they followed the Duke’s lead along an evil-looking street of tumbledown dwelling-houses.

Then, between two high walls, along a narrow passage where the rays of a solitary lamp, struggling through grimy glass, were barely sufficient to dispel a small circle of gloom in its own area. When they had passed it the rest was darkness, foul smells, greasy mud squishing from beneath their feet, and wisps of mist curling cold about their faces.

At the end of that long dark alley-way they came out upon a deserted wharf. De Richleau turned to the left and the others followed. To one side of them the steep face of a tall brick building, from which chains and pulleys hung in slack festoons, towered up into the darkness. On the other, a few feet away, the river surged, oily, turgid, yellow and horrible as it turned to the sea.

As if in a fresh phase of their nightmare, they stumbled forward over planks, hawsers and pieces of old iron, the neglected debris of the riverside, until fifty yards farther on De Richleau halted.

‘This is it,’ he announced, fumbling with a rusty padlock. ‘Castelnau hadn’t got a key and so we’ll have to break this thing. Hunt around, and see if you can find a piece of iron that we can use as a jemmy. The longer the better. It will give us more purchase.’

They rummaged round in the semi-darkness, broken only by a riverside light some distance away along the wharf and the masthead lanterns of a few long barges anchored out on the swiftly flowing waters.

‘This do?’ Richard pulled a rusty lever from a winch and, grabbing it from him, the Duke thrust the narrow end into the hoop of the padlock.

‘Now then,’ he said, as he gripped the cold, moist iron, ‘steady pressure isn’t any good. It needs a violent jerk, so when I say “go!” we must all throw our weight on the bar together. Ready? Go!’

They heaved downwards. There was a sudden snap. The tongue of the padlock had been wrenched out of the lock. De Richleau removed it from the chain and in another moment they had the tall wooden door open.

Once inside, De Richleau struck a match, and while he shaded it with his hands the others looked about them. From what little they could see, the place appeared to be empty. They moved quickly forward, striking more matches as they went, in the direction where Castelnau had told them they would find a trap-door leading to the cellars.

In a far corner they halted. ‘Stand back all of you,’ whispered Rex, and while the Duke held up a light he pulled at the second in a row of upright iron girders, apparently built in to strengthen the wall. As Castelnau had said in his trance, it was a secret lever to operate the trap. The girder came forward and a large square of flooring lifted noiselessly on well-oiled hinges.

De Richleau blew out his match and produced the small automatic which he had taken from the banker. ‘I will go first,’ he said, ‘and you, Rex, follow me. Richard, you have the other gun so you had better come last. You can look after Marie Lou and protect our rear. No noise now, because if we’re lucky our man is here.’

Feeling about with his foot he ascertained that a flight of stairs led downwards. His shoes made no noise, and it was evident that they were covered with a thick carpet. Swiftly but cautiously he began to descend the flight and the others followed him down into the pitchy darkness.

At the bottom of the stairs they groped their way along a tunnel until the Duke was brought up sharply by a wooden partition at which it seemed to end. He fumbled for the handle, thinking it was a door. The sides were as smooth and polished as the centre, yet it moved gently under his touch, and after a moment he found it to be a sliding panel. With the faintest click of ball bearings it slid back on its runners.

Straining their eyes they peered into the great apartment upon which it opened. A hundred feet long at least and thirty wide, it stretched out before them. Two lines of thick pillars, acting as supports to the roof above, and rows of chairs divided in the centre by an aisle which led up to a distant altar, gave it the appearance of a big private chapel. It was lit by one solitary lamp which hung suspended before the altar, and that distant beacon did not penetrate to the shadows in which they stood.

On tiptoe and with their weapons ready they moved forward along the wall. De Richleau peered from side to side as he advanced, his pistol levelled. Rex crept along beside him, the iron winch lever which they had used to smash the padlock gripped tight in his big fist. At any moment they expected their presence to be discovered.

As they crept nearer to the hanging lamp, they saw that the place had been furnished with the utmost luxury and elegance for the unholy meetings. It was, indeed, a superbly equipped temple for the worship of the Devil. Above the altar a great and horrible presentation of the Goat of Mendes, worked in the loveliest coloured silks, leered down at them; its eyes were two red stones which had been inset in the tapestry. They flickered with dull malevolence in the dim light of the solitary lamp.

On the side walls were pictures of men, women and beasts practising obscenities only possible of conception in the brain of a mad artist. Below the enormous central figure, which had hideous, distorted, human faces protruding from its elbows, knees and belly, was a great altar of glistening red stone, worked and inlaid with other coloured metals in the Italian fashion. Upon it reposed the ancient ‘devil’s bibles’ containing all the liturgies of hell; broken crucifixes and desecrated chalices stolen from churches and profaned here at the meetings of the Satanists.

Luxurious armchairs upholstered in red velvet and gold with elaborate canopies of lace above, such as High Prelates use in cathedrals when assisting at important ceremonies, flanked the altar on either side. Below the steps to the short chancel, on a level with where they stood, were arranged rows and rows of cushioned prie-dieu for the accommodation of the worshippers.

No sound of movement disturbed the stillness of the heavy incense-laden air and with a sinking of the heart De Richleau knew that they had lost their man. He had gambled blindly upon Tanith’s message and she had proved wrong as to time. Mocata might not be in Paris for days to come; perhaps he had divined their journey and, knowing that he would be unmolested while they were abroad, returned to Simon’s house where, even now, he might be foully murdering little Fleur. It seemed that their last hope had gone.

Then, as they stepped from the side aisle they suddenly saw a thing that had been hidden from them by the rows of chair backs—a body, clad in a long white robe with mystic signs embroidered on it in black and red, lay spread-eagled, face downwards on the floor, at the bottom of the chancel steps.

‘It’s Simon!’ breathed the Duke.

‘Oh, hell, they’ve killed him!’ Rex ran forward and knelt beside the body of their friend. They turned him over and felt his heart. It was beating slowly but rhythmically. The Duke pulled out of his waistcoat pocket a little bottle, without which he never travelled, and held it beneath Simon’s nose. He shuddered suddenly and his eyes opened, staring up at them.

‘Simon, darling, Simon. It’s us—we’re here.’ Marie Lou grasped his limp hands between her own.

He shuddered again and struggled into a sitting position.

‘What—what’s happened?’ he murmured, but his voice was normal.

‘You left us, you dear, pig-headed ass!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘Gave yourself up and ruined our whole plan of campaign. What’s happened to you? That’s what we want to know.’

‘Well, I met him.’ Simon gave the ghost of a smile. ‘And he took me to Paris in his plane. Then to some place down on the riverside.’ He gazed round and added quickly: ‘But this is it. How did you get here?’

‘Never mind that,’ De Richleau urged him. ‘Have you seen Fleur?’

‘Yes. He sent a car for me, and when I reached the plane she was already in it. We had an argument and he swore he’d keep his word unless I went through with this.’ ‘The ritual to Saturn?’ asked De Richleau. ‘Um. He said that if I’d do it without making any fuss he’d let me take Fleur out of here immediately afterwards and back to England.’

‘He’s double-crossed you, as we thought he would,’ Rex grunted. ‘There’s not a soul in this place. He’s quit, and taken Fleur with him. Can’t you say where he’ll be likely to make for?’ ‘Ner.’ Simon shook his head. ‘Directly we started on the ritual he put me under. I let him, but of course he would have done that anyway. The last I saw of Fleur she was sound asleep in that armchair and the next thing I knew you were all staring down at me just now.’

‘If you completed the ritual, Mocata knows now where the Talisman is,’ De Richleau said abruptly. ‘Yes,’ Simon nodded.

‘Then he will have gone to wherever it is—from here.’ ‘Of course,’ Richard cut in. ‘That’s his main objective. He wouldn’t lose a second.’

‘Then Simon must know the place to which he’s gone.’ ‘How’s that? I don’t quite get you.’ Rex looked at the Duke with a puzzled frown.

‘In his subconscious, I mean. Our only hope now is for me to put Simon under again and make him repeat every word that he said when the ritual was performed. That will give us the hiding-place of the Talisman and the place to which I’ll stake my life Mocata is heading at the present moment. Are you game, Simon?’

‘Yes, of course. You know that I would do anything to help.’

‘Right.’ The Duke took him by the arm and pushed him gently. ‘Sit down in that chair to the right of the altar and we’ll go ahead.’

Simon settled himself and leaned back on the comfortable cushions, his white robe with its esoteric designs in black and red settling about his feet like the long skirts of a woman. De Richleau made a few swift passes. ‘Sleep, Simon,’ he commanded.

Simon’s eyelids trembled and closed. After a moment he began to breathe deeply and regularly. The Duke went on: ‘You are in this temple with Mocata. The ritual to Saturn is about to begin. Repeat the words that he made you speak then.’

Dreamily but easily, Simon spoke the words of power which were utterly meaningless to Richard, Rex and Marie Lou, who stood, a tensely anxious audience, at the bottom of the chancel steps.

‘On,’ commanded De Richleau. ‘Jump a quarter of an hour.’ Simon spoke again, more sentences incomprehensible to the uninitiate.

‘On again,’ commanded De Richleau. ‘Another quarter of an hour has passed.’

‘… was built above the place where the Talisman is buried,’ said Simon. ‘It will be found in the earth beneath the right-hand stone of the altar.’

‘Go back one minute,’ ordered De Richleau, and Simon spoke once more.

‘… Attila’s death the Greek secreted it and took it to his own country. In the city of Yanina, upon his return, he became possessed of devils and was handed over to the brethren at the monastery above Metsovo, which stands in the mountains twenty miles east of the city. They failed to cast out the spirits which inhabited his body and so imprisoned him in an underground cell and there, before he died, he buried the Talisman. Seven years later the dungeons were demolished and the crypt built in their place on the same site, with the great church above it. The Talisman remained undisturbed in its original hiding-place. Its power gradually pervaded the whole of the Brotherhood, filling it with lechery and greed, so that it disintegrated and was finally disbanded before the invasion by the Turks. The chapel to the left in the crypt was built above the place where the Talisman is buried.’

‘Stop,’ ordered the Duke. ‘Awake now.’

‘By Jove, we’ve got it!’ exclaimed Rex. But as he spoke a slight noise behind them made him swing upon his heel.

Four figures stood there in the shadows. The tallest suddenly stepped forward.

Richard’s hand leapt to his gun but the tall man snapped: ‘Stand still, mon vieux, I have you covered,’ and they saw that he held an automatic.

The other two strangers came forward. The fourth was Castelnau.

The leader of the party turned to a little old man, who stood beside him wearing an out-of-date bowler hat that came almost down to his ears, then nodded towards the Duke.

‘Is that De Richleau, Verrier? You should be able to recognise him, since he was in your time.’

‘Oui, monsieur,’ declared the little old man. ‘That is the famous Royalist who caused me so much trouble when I was young. I would know his face again anywhere.’

‘Bon! All this is very interesting.’ The tall, hard-eyed man glanced from the obscene pictures on the walls to the magnificent appurtenances of Satanic worship upon the altar, and went on in a silky tone: ‘I have had an idea for some time that a secret society has been practising devil worship in Paris and is responsible for certain disappearances, but I could never lay my hands on them before. Now I have got five of you red-handed.’

He paused for a moment then gave a jerky little bow. ‘Madame et Messieurs, permit me to introduce myself. I am le Chef de la Surete, Daudet. Monsieur le Duc, I arrest you as an enemy of the Government upon the old charge. The rest of you I shall hold with him, as persons suspected of kidnapping and the murder of young children at the practice of infamous rites.’

CHAPTER XXXII

THE GATEWAY OF THE PIT

For ten seconds the friends stood there staring at the detective. Castelnau’s presence gave them the key to this grotesque but highly dangerous situation. Mocata must have left the warehouse at almost the same time they had left the banker’s apartment. Perhaps their taxis had even passed within a few feet of each other, racing in opposite directions. Tanith had proved right after all when she had told them that she could see Mocata talking with Castelnau that night in his flat.

Mocata had found the banker there, released and revived him, and then listened to his story; realising at once that, since it was possible for De Richleau to hypnotise Castelnau against his will, it would be easy for him to do the same to Simon, learn the hiding place of the Talisman, and follow him to it.

Now that they had discovered the secret Satanic temple which was his headquarters in Paris, the place would be useless to him and only a source of danger. Unmentionable crimes had been committed there, and it would be far too great a risk for him ever to visit it again. Then the brilliant decision that, since the place had to be abandoned, he could at least use it to destroy his enemies.

The whole thing flashed through De Richleau’s brain in those few seconds. Mocata’s first idea that, if only he could get the police to the warehouse before they left it, he would have involved them in all the crimes associated with such a place and thrown them off his trail for good. Next, the vital question, how to get the police there in time. Would they act at once if Castelnau were sent to tell them a tale about Satanic orgies or only laugh at him? What practical crime could his enemies be charged with? Then the perfect inspiration. If the authorities were told that De Richleau, the Royalist exile, was a party to the business they would not lose a second, but seize on it as a heavensent opportunity to throw discredit upon their political opponents. What a magnificent scandal for the Government Press to handle.

‘Secret Royalist Society practises Black Art’—‘Satanic Temple raided at Asnieres’—‘Notorious exile arrested while performing Blasphemous Rites’. The Duke could see the scurrilous headlines and hear the newsboy’s cry.

And the trick had worked. They had actually been discovered in that house of hell with Simon in the tell-tale robes, seated before the altar, while he performed what must certainly have appeared to the police as some evil ceremony and the other three had stood there, forming a small congregation.

How could they possibly hope to persuade the tall, suspicious-eyed Monsieur le Chef de la Surete Daudet of their innocence, much less get him to agree to their immediate release. Yet, as they stood there, Mocata was on his way to the place where he kept his special plane, if not already aboard it. Night flying would have no terrors for him who, if he wished, could invoke the elements to his aid. Fleur would be with him and he meant to murder her as certainly as they stood there. His determination to secure the return of Tanith made the sacrifice of a baptised child imperative, and before another twenty-four hours had gone he would be in possession of the Talisman of Set, bringing upon the world God alone knew what horrors of war, famine, disablement and death.

De Richleau knew that there was only one thing for it—even if he was shot down there and then—he sprang like a panther at the Chef de la Surete’s throat.

The detective fired from his hip. Flame stabbed the semi-darkness of the vault. The crash hit their eardrums like the explosion of a slab of gelignite. The bullet seared through the Duke’s left arm, but his attack hurled the Police-Chief to the ground.

Simon and Marie Lou flung themselves simultaneously upon the old detective Verrier. The thoughts which had passed through De Richleau’s mind in those breathless seconds had also raced through hers. If they submitted to arrest their last hope would be gone of saving her beloved Fleur.

Richard had no chance to pull his gun. The third man had grabbed him round the body but Rex rapped the policeman on the back of the head with his iron bar. The man grunted and toppled sideways on the chancel steps.

Rex leapt over the body straight for Castelnau. Quick as a flash, the banker turned and ran, his long legs flicking past each other as he bounded down the empty aisle, but Rex’s legs were even longer. He caught the Satanist at the entrance of the passage and grabbed him by the back of the neck. Castelnau tore himself away and stood panting for a second, half crouching with bared teeth, his back against the wall. Then for the second time that night Rex’s leg-of-mutton fist took him on the chin and he slid to the ground like a pole-axed ox.

De Richleau, his wounded arm hanging limp and useless, writhed beneath the Chef de la Surete who had one hand on his throat and with the other was groping for his fallen gun.

His fingers closed upon it. He jerked it up and fired at Richard, who was dashing to De Richleau’s help. The shot went thudding into the belly of the Satanic Goat above the altar. Next second the heavy prie-dieu which Richard had swung aloft came crashing down upon the Police-Chief’s head.

Rex only paused to see that the banker was completely knocked out, then rushed back to the struggling mass of bodies below the altar steps.

Simon and Marie Lou had managed the little man between them. Almost insane with worry for her child, her thumb nails were dug into his neck and, while he screeched with pain, Simon was lashing his hands behind his back.

Richard was pulling the Duke out from beneath the unconscious Chef de la Surete’s body. Rex lent a ready hand and then, panting with their exertions, they surveyed the scene of their short but desperate encounter.

‘Holy smoke! That’s done me a whole heap of good,’ Rex grinned at Richard. ‘I’m almost feeling like my normal self again.’

‘The odds were with us but we owe our escape to Greyeyes’ pluck.’ Richard looked swiftly at the Duke. ‘Let’s see that wound, old chap. I hope to God the bullet didn’t smash the bone.’

‘I don’t think so—grazed it though and the muscle’s badly torn.’ De Richleau closed his eyes and his face twisted at a stab of pain as they lifted his arm to cut the coat sleeve away.

‘I know what you must be feeling,’ Simon sympathised. ‘I’ll never forget the pain of the wound I got that night we discovered the secret of the Forbidden Territory.’

‘Don’t fuss round me,’ muttered the Duke, ‘but get that damned priest’s robe off. If these people don’t return to the Surete more police will come to look for them. We’ve got to get out of here— quick.’

In frantic haste Marie Lou bandaged the wound while Richard made a sling and the other two wrenched off the clothes of the detective that Rex had knocked out. Simon scrambled into them and, as he snatched up the man’s overcoat, the others were already hurrying towards the entrance to the passage at the far end of the temple.

Richard rushed Marie Lou along the dark corridor and they tumbled up the flight of steps. Everything seemed to fade again after those awful moments when they had been so near arrest. She felt the cold air of the wharf-side damp upon her cheeks— they were running down the narrow passage between the high brick walls—back in the gloomy square where the old woman still sat crouched upon the steps near the squalid cafe. Rex had taken her other arm and, her feet treading the pavements automatically, they were hastening through endless, sordid, fogbound streets. They crossed the bridge over the Seine and, at last, under the railway arches at Courcelles, found a taxi. When next she was conscious of her surroundings they were in a little room at the airport and the four men were poring over maps. Snatches of the conversation came to her vaguely.

‘Twelve hundred miles—more. Northern Greece. You cannot cross the Alps—make for Vienna, then south to Trieste—no, Vienna-Agram-Fiume. From Agram we can fly down the valley of the River Save; otherwise we should have to cross the Dolomites. That’s right! Then follow the coastline of the Adriatic for five hundred miles south-east to Corfu. Yanina is about fifty miles inland from there. You can follow the course of the river Kalamans through the mountains — Shall we be able to land at Yanina, though—yes, look, the map shows that it’s on a big lake. The circuit of the shore must be fifteen miles at least. It can’t all be precipitous—certain to be sandy stretches along it somewhere —how far do you make it to Metsovo from there? — twenty miles as the crow flies. That means thirty at least in such a mountainous district. The monastery is a few miles beyond, on Mount Peristeri — pretty useful mountain - look. The map gives it as seven thousand five hundred feet — we must abandon the plane at Yanina. If we’re lucky we’ll get a car as far as Metsovo — God knows what the roads will be like — after that we’ll have to use horses in any case. How soon do you reckon you can make it Richard?’

‘Fourteen hundred miles. We should be in Vienna by midday. Fiume, say, half-past two. I ought to make Yanina by eight o’clock, with Rex taking turn and turn about flying the plane. After that it depends on what fresh transport we can get.’

Next, they were in the plane again — lifting out of the fogbound Paris to a marvellous dawn, which gilded the edges of the clouds and streaked the sky with rose and purple and lemon.

Richard was flying the plane in a kind of trance, yet never for a moment losing sight of important landmarks or the dials by which he adjusted his controls. The others slept.

When Marie Lou roused, the plane was at rest near a long line of hangars dimly glimpsed through another ghostly fog. Someone said ‘Stuttgart’ and then she saw Simon standing on the ground below her, conversing in German with an airport official.

‘A big, grey, private plane,’ he was saying urgently. ‘The pilot is a short, square-shouldered fellow; the passengers a big, fat, bald-headed man and a little girl.’

Marie Lou leaned forward eagerly but she did not catch the airport man’s reply. A moment later Simon was climbing into the plane and saying to the Duke:

‘He must be taking the same route, but he’s an hour and a half ahead of us. I expect he had his own car in Paris. That would have saved him time while we were hunting for that wretched taxi.’

Rex had taken over the controls and they were in the air once more. Richard was sitting next to Marie Lou, sound asleep. For an endless time they seemed to soar through a cloudless sky of pale, translucent blue. She, too, must have dropped off again, for she was not conscious of their landing at Vienna, only when she woke in the early afternoon that the pilots had changed over and Richard was back at the controls.

Yet, in some curious way, although she had not actually been aware of their landing, fragments of their conversation must have penetrated her sleep at the time. She knew that there had also been fog at Vienna and that Mocata had left the airport there only an hour before them, so in the journey from Paris they had managed to gain half an hour on him.

The engine droned on, its deep note soothing their frayed nerves. Richard hardly knew that he was flying, although he used all the skill at his command. It seemed as though some other force was driving the aeroplane on and that he was standing outside it as a spectator. All his faculties were numbed and his anxiety for Fleur deadened by an intense absorption with the question of speed—speed—speed.

At Fiume there was no trace of fog. Glorious sunshine, warm and life-giving, flooded the aerodrome, making the hangars shimmer in the distance. The Duke crawled out from the couch of rugs and cushions that had been made up in the back of the cabin to accommodate a fifth passenger, and chosen by him as more comfortable for his wounded arm. He questioned the landing-ground official in fluent Italian, but without success.

‘From Vienna Mocata must have taken another route,’ he told Richard as he climbed back. ‘Perhaps a short cut over the Dinarie Alps or by way of Sarajevo. If so he will have more than made up his half-hour lead again. I feared as much when I saw that there was no fog here. I can’t explain it but I have an idea that he is able to surround us with it, yet only when we follow him to places where he has been quite recently himself.’

Rex took over for the long lap down the Dalmatian coast above the countless islands that fringe the Yugoslavian mainland and lay beneath them in the sparkling Adriatic Sea.

They slept again, all except Rex who, a crack pilot, was now handling the machine with superb skill.

As he flew the plane half his thoughts were centred about Tanith. He could see her there, lying cold and dead, in the library a thousand miles away at Cardinals Folly. That dream of happiness had been so brief. Never again would he see the sudden smile break out like sunshine rising over mountains on that beautiful, calm face. Never again hear the husky, melodious voice whispering terms of endearment. Never again—never again! But he was on the trail of her murderer and if he died for it he meant to make that inhuman monster pay.

The Adriatic merged into the Ionian Sea. The endless rugged coastline rushed past below them on their left; its mountains rising steeply to the interior of Albania, and its vales breaking them here and there to run down to little white fishing villages on the seashore. Villages that in Roman times had been great centres of population through the constant passage of merchandise, soldiers, scholars, travellers between Brindisi, upon the heel of Italy, and the Peninsula of Greece.

Then they were over Corfu. Banking steeply, he headed for the mainland and picked up the northern mouth of the River Kalamas. The deep blue of the sea flecked by its tiny white crests vanished behind them. Twisting and turning, the plane drove upwards above the desolate valleys where the river trickled, a streak of silver in the evening light. The sun sank behind them into the distant sea. They were heading for the huge chain of mountains, which forms the backbone of Greece.

A mist was rising which obscured the long, empty patches and rare cultivated fields below. The light faded, its last rays lit a great distant snow-capped crest which crowned the watershed.

A lake lay below them, placid and calm in the evening light but glimpsed only through the banks of fog. At its south-western end the white buildings of a town were vaguely discernible now and then as Rex circled slowly, searching for a landing-place. Suddenly, through a gap in the billowing whitish-grey, his eye caught a big plane standing in a level field.

‘That’s Mocata’s machine,’ yelled Simon who was in the cockpit beside him.

Rex banked again and, coming into the wind, brought them to earth within fifty yards of it. The others roused and scrambled out.

The mist which Rex had first perceived a quarter of an hour before, from his great altitude, now hemmed them in on every side.

A man came forward from a low, solitary hangar as the plane landed. De Richleau saw him, a vague figure, half obscured by the tenuous veils of mist; went over to him and said, when he rejoined them:

‘That fellow is a French mechanic. He tells me Mocata landed only half an hour ago. He came in from Monastir but had trouble in the mountains, which delayed him; nobody but a maniac or a superman would try and get through that way at all. This fellow thinks that he can get us a car; he runs the airport, such as it is, and we’re darned lucky to find any facilities here at all.’

Richard had just woken from a long sleep. Before he knew what was happening he found that they were all packed into an ancient open Ford with a tattered hood. Simon was on one side of him and Marie Lou on the other. Rex squatted on the floor of the car at their feet and De Richleau was in front beside the driver.

They could not see more than twenty yards ahead. The lamps made little impression upon the gloom before them. The road was a sandy track, fringed at the sides with coarse grass and boulders. No houses, cottages or white-walled gardens broke the monotony of the way as they rattled and bumped, mounting continuously up long, curved gradients.

De Richleau peered ahead into the murk. Occasional rifts gave him glimpses of the rocky mountains round which they climbed or, upon the other side, a cliff edge falling sheer to a mist-filled valley.

He, too, could only remember episodes from that wild journey : an unendurable weariness had pressed upon him once they had boarded the plane and left Paris. Even his power of endurance had failed to last and he had slept during the greater part of their fourteen hundred mile flight. He was still sleepy now and only half awake as that unknown demon driver, who had hurried them with few words into the rickety Ford, crouched over his wheel and pressed the car, rocketing from hairpin bend to hairpin bend, onwards and upwards.

The last light had been shut out by the lower ranges of mountains behind them as they wound their way through the valleys to the greater peaks which, unseen in the mist and darkness, they knew lay towering to the skies towards the east. Deep ruts in the track, where mountain torrents cut it in winter cascading downwards to the lower levels, made the way hideously uneven. The car jolted and bounded, skidding violently from time to time, loose shale and pebbles rocketing from its back tyres as it took the dangerous bends.

In the back Richard, Marie Lou and Simon lurched, swayed, and bumped each other as they crouched in silent misery, their teeth chattering with the cold of the chill night that was now about them in those lofty regions….

They were in a room, a strange, low-ceilinged, eastern room, with a great, heavy, wooden door, under which they could see the fog wreathing upwards in the light of a solitary oil lamp set upon a rough-hewn table. Bunches of onions and strips of dried meat hung from the low rafters. The earthen floor of the place was cold under foot. On a deep window recess, in a thick wall stood a crude earthenware jug, and a platter with a loaf of coarse bread upon it, which was covered by a bead-edged piece of muslin.

Marie Lou roused to find herself drinking coarse, red wine out of a thick, glass tumbler. She saw Rex sitting on a wooden bench against the wall, staring before him with unseeing eyes at the grimy window. The others stood talking round a lop-sided table. A peasant woman, with a scarf about her head, whose face she could not see, appeared to be arguing with them. Marie Lou had an idea that it was about money, since De Richleau held a small pile of notes in his hand. Then the peasant woman was gone and the others were talking together again. She caught a few words here and there.

‘I thought it was a ruin … inhabited still … they beg us not to go there … not of an official order or anything to do with the Greek Church. They look on them as heathens here … associates of Mocata’s?–– No, more like a community of outlaws who have taken refuge there under the disguise of a religious brotherhood … Talisman has affected them, perhaps. Forty or fifty of them. The people here shun the place even in the daytime, and at night none of them would venture near it at any price… . You managed to get a driver?–-Yes, of a kind——- What’s wrong with him?–– I don’t know. The woman didn’t seem to trust him, but I had great difficulty in understanding her at all–– Sort of bad man of the village, eh? … Have to trust him if no one else will take us.’

De Richleau passed his hand across his eyes. What was it that they had been talking about. He was so tired, so terribly tired. There had been a peasant woman, with whom he had talked of the ruined monastery up in the mountains. She seemed to be filled with horror of the place and had implored him again and again not to go. He began to wonder how they had conversed. He could make himself understood in most European languages, but he had very little knowledge of modern Greek; but that did not matter they must get on — get on….

The others were standing round him like a lot of ghosts in the narrow, fog-filled village street. A little hunchback with bright, sharp eyes was peering at him. The fellow wore a dark sombrero, and a black cloak, covering his malformed body, dangled to his feet; the light from the semi-circular window of the inn was just sufficient to illuminate his face. A great, old-fashioned carriage, with two lean, ill-matched horses harnessed to it, stood waiting.

They piled into it. The musty smell of the straw-filled cushions came strongly to their nostrils. The hunchback gave them one curious, cunning look from his bright eyes, and climbed upon the box. The lumbering vehicle began to rock from side to side. The one-storeyed, flat-topped houses in the village disappeared behind them and were swallowed up in the mist.

They forded a swift but shallow river outside the village, then the roadway gave place to a stony track. Ghostlike and silent, walls of rock loomed up on either side. The horses ceased trotting and fell into a steady, laboured walk, hauling the great, unwieldy barouche from bend to bend up the rock-strewn way into the fastness of the mountains.

Simon’s teeth were chattering. That damp, clinging greyness seemed to enter into his very bones. He tried to remember what day it was and at what hour they had left Paris. Was it last night or the night before or the night before that? He could not remember and gave it up.

The way seemed interminable. No one spoke. The carriage jolted on, the hunchback crouched upon his seat, the lean horses pulling gallantly. The curve of the road ahead was always hidden from them and no sooner had they passed it than they lost sight of the curve behind.

At last the carriage halted. The driver climbed down off his box and pointed upwards, as they stumbled out on to the track. De Richleau was thrusting money into his hand. He and his aged vehicle disappeared in the shadows. Richard looked back to catch a last glimpse of it and it suddenly struck him then how queer it was that the carriage had no lamps.

The rest were pressing on, stumbling and slithering as they followed the way which had now become no more than a footpath leading upwards between huge rocks.

After a little, the gloom seemed to lighten and they perceived stars above their heads. Then, rounding a rugged promontory, they saw the age-old monastery standing out against the night sky upon the mountain slope above.

It was huge and dark and silent, with steep walls rising on two sides from a precipice. A great dome, like an inverted bowl, rose in its centre, but a portion of it had fallen in and the jagged edges showed plainly against the deep blue of the starlit night beyond.

With renewed courage they staggered on up the steep rise toward the great semi-circular arch of the entrance. The gates stood open wide, rotted and fallen from their hinges. No sign of life greeted their appearance as they passed through into the spacious courtyard.

Instinctively they made for the main building above which curved the broken arc of the ruined Byzantine dome. That must be the Church, and the crypt would lie below it.

They crossed the broken pavements of the forecourt, the Duke leaning heavily on Rex’s arm. He nodded towards a few faint lights which came from a row of outbuildings. Rex followed his glance in silence and they hurried on. That was evidently the best-preserved portion of the ruin, in which these so-called monks resided. A gross laugh, followed by the sound of smashing glass and then a hoarse voice cursing, came from that direction, confirming their thought.

All the way up from the inn half-formed fears had been troubling De Richleau that they might fall foul of this ill-omened brotherhood. He assumed them to be little less than robbers under a thin disguise, who probably eked out a miserable existence by levying toll in corn and oil and goats’ milk upon the neighbouring peasantry, but this great pile upon the slopes of Mount Peristeri was so much more vast than anything that he had imagined. A matter of fifty men might easily be lost among its rambling courts and buildings.

They advanced through another great courtyard, surrounded by ruined colonnades which were visible only by the faint starlight from above. Built by some early Christian saint, when Byzantium was still an Empire and Western Europe labouring through the semi-barbarous night of the Dark Ages, the colossal ruin must once have housed thousands of earnest men, all engaged day by day in pious study, or various active tasks to provide for that great community. Now it was as dead as those African temples which have been overgrown by jungle, only a small fragment of it occupied by a small band of dissolute, uncultured rogues.

In wonder and awe they passed by the broad flight of steps, through the vast portico on which the elaborate carvings, worn and disfigured by time, were just discernible, into the body of the Church.

The starlight, filtering dimly through the great rent in the dome a hundred feet above their heads, was barely sufficient to light their way as they scrambled over broken pillars and heaps of debris round the walls until they found a low door. From it, a flight of steps led down into the Stygian blackness of the vaults below.

Marie Lou, stumbling along half-bemused between Simon and Richard, found herself wondering what they could be doing in this ancient ruin, then memory flooded back. It was here, below them, that the Talisman of Set was buried. There had been no fog in the courtyard outside so they must have got there before Mocata after all—but where was Fleur. She was going to die— she felt that she was dying—but first she must find Fleur.

The others had halted and Richard noticed then that De Richleau was carrying an old-fashioned lantern, which he supposed he had borrowed at the inn. The Duke lit the stump of candle that was inside it and led the way down those time-worn stairs. The others, treading instinctively on tiptoe, now followed him into the stale, musty darkness.

At the bottom of the steps they came out into a low, vaulted crypt which, by the faint light of the lantern, seemed to spread interminably under the flagstones of the church.

De Richleau turned to the east, judging the altar of the crypt to be situated below the one in the Church above, but when he had traversed twenty yards he halted suddenly. A black, solid mass blocked their path in the very centre of the vault.

‘Of course,’ Marie Lou heard him murmur. ‘I forgot that this place was built some centuries ago. Altars were placed in the centre of churches then. This must be it.’

‘We’ve beaten him to it, then,’ Rex’s voice came with a little note of triumph.

‘Perhaps he couldn’t get anyone to drive him up from Metsovo at this hour of night,’ Richard suggested. ‘Our man was supposed to be mad, or something, and they said that no one else would go.’

‘Those stones are going to take some shifting.’ Rex took the lantern and bent to examine the black slabs of the solid, oblong altar.

‘Are you certain that this is the right one?’ Richard asked. ‘My brain seems to be going. I can’t remember things properly any more but I thought when we got the information from Simon in his trance he said something about a side-chapel in the crypt.’

No one answered. While his words were still ringing in their ears each one of them suddenly felt that he was being overlooked from behind.

Rex dropped the lantern, De Richleau swung round, Marie Lou gave a faint cry. A dull light had appeared only ten paces in their rear. Leading to it they saw a short flight of steps. Beyond, a chapel with a smaller altar, from which the right-hand stone had been wrenched. And there, standing before it, was Mocata.

With a bellow of fury, Rex started forward, but the Satanist suddenly raised his left hand. In it he held a small black cigar-shaped thing, which was slightly curved. About it there was a phosphorescent glow, so that, despite the semi-darkness, the very blackness of the thing itself stood out clear and sharp against its surrounding aura of misty light. The ray from it seemed to impinge upon their bodies, instantly checking their advance. They found themselves transfixed—brought to a standstill in a running group—halfway between the central altar and the chapel steps.

Without uttering a word, Mocata came down the steps and slowly walked round them, carrying the thing which they now guessed to be the Talisman aloft in his left hand. A glowing phosphorescent circle appeared on the damp stone flags in his tracks and, as he completed the circuit, they felt their limbs relax.

Again they rushed at him, but were brought up with a jerk. It was impossible to break out of that magic circle in which he had confined them.

With slow steps, the Satanist returned to the chapel and proceeded to light a row of black candles upon the broken altar there. Then, with a little gasp of unutterable fear, Marie Lou saw that Fleur was crouching in a dark corner near the upturned earth from which the Talisman had been recovered.

‘Fleur—darling!’ she cried imploringly, stretching out her arms, but the child did not seem to hear. With round eyes she knelt there near the altar, staring out towards the crypt, but apparently seeing nothing.

Mocata lit some incense in a censer and swung it rhythmically before the broken altar, murmuring strange invocations.

He moved so smoothly and silently that he might have been a phantom but for the lisping intonation of his low musical voice. Then Fleur began to cry, and the sobbing of the child had an unmistakable reality which tore at the very fibre of their hearts. Again and again they tried to break out of the circle, but at last, forced to give up their frantic attempts, they crouched together straining against the invisible barrier, watching with fear-distended eyes as a gradual materialisation began to form in the clouds of incense above the altar stone.

At first it seemed to be the face of Mocata’s black familiar that Rex had seen in Simon’s house, so far away in London and such an endless time before, but it changed and lengthened. A pointed beard appeared on the chin and four great curved horns sprouted from its head. Soon it became definite, clear and solid. That monstrous, shaggy beast that had held court on Salisbury Plain, the veritable Goat of Mendes, glared at them with its red, baleful, slanting eyes, and belched foetid, deathly breaths from its cavernous nostrils.

Mocata raised the Talisman and set it upon the forehead of the Beast, laying it lengthwise upon the flat, bald, bony skull, where it blazed like some magnificent jewel which had a strange black centre. Then he stooped, seized the child and, tearing off her clothes, flung her naked body full length upon the altar beneath the raised fore-hooves of the Goat.

Sick with apprehension and frantic with distress, the prisoners in the circle heard the sorcerer begin to intone the terrible lines of the Black Mass.

Horrified but powerless, they watched the swinging of the censer, the chanting of the blasphemous prayers, and the blessing of the dagger by the Goat, knowing that, at the conclusion of the awful ceremony, the perverted maniac playing the part of the devil’s priest would rip the child open from throat to groin while offering her soul to Hell.

Half crazy with fear, they saw Mocata pick up the knife and raise his arm above the little body, about to strike.

CHAPTER XXXIII

DEATH OF A MAN UNKNOWN, FROM NATURAL CAUSES

Rex stood with the sweat pouring down his face. The muscles of his arms jerked convulsively. His whole will was concentrated in an effort to fling himself forward, up the steps; yet, except for the tremors which ran through his body, the invisible power held him motionless in its grip.

De Richleau prayed. Silent but unceasing, his soundless words vibrated on the ether. He knew the futility of any attempt at physical intervention, and doubted now if his supplications could avail when pitted against such a terrible manifestation of evil as the Goat of Mendes.

Richard crouched near him, his face white and bloodless, his eyes staring. His arms were stretched out, as though to snatch Fleur away or in an appeal for mercy, but he could not move them.

Marie Lou had one hand resting on his shoulder. She was past fear for herself, past all thought of the terrible end which might come to them in a few moments, past even the horror of losing Richard should they all be blotted out in some awful final darkness.

She did not pray or strive to dash towards her child. The pulsing of her heart seemed to be temporarily suspended. Her brain was working with that strange clarity which only comes upon those rare occasions when danger appears to be so overwhelming that there is no possible escape. Into her mind there came a clear-cut picture of herself as she had been in her dream, holding what De Richleau said was the great Red Book of Appin. Her fingers could feel the very cover again with its soft hairy skin.

Simon dropped to his knees between the Duke and Rex. He made an effort to cast himself forward but rocked very slightly from side to side, stricken with an agony of misery and remorse. It was his folly which had led his friends into this terrible pass and now he did the only thing he could to make atonement. His brain no longer clouded, but with full knowledge of the enormity of the thing, he offered himself silently to the Power of Darkness if Fleur might be spared.

Mocata paused for a moment, the knife still poised above the body of the child, to turn and look at him. The thought vibration had been so strong that he had caught it, but he had already drawn all that he needed out of Simon. Slowly his pale lips crumpled in a cruel smile. He shook his head in rejection of the offer and raised the knife again.

The Duke’s hand jerked up in a frantic effort to stay the blow by the sign of the cross, but it was struck down to his side by one of the rays from the Talisman, just as though some powerful physical force had hit it.

Richard’s jaws opened as though about to shout but no sound issued from them.

With a supreme effort Rex lowered his head to charge, but the invisible weight of twenty men seemed to force back his shoulders.

Before the mental eyes of Marie Lou the Red Book of Appin lay open. Again she saw the stained vellum page and the faded writing in strange characters upon it. And now once more as in her dream she could understand the one sentence : They only who Love without Desire shall have power granted to them in the Darkest Hour.

Then her lips opened. With no knowledge of its meaning, and a certainty that she had never seen it written or heard it pronounced before, she spoke a strange word—having five syllables.

The effect was instantaneous. The whole chamber rocked as though shaken by an earthquake. The walls receded, the floor began to spin. The crypt gyrated with such terrifying speed that the occupants of the circle clutched frantically at each other to save themselves from falling. The altar candles swayed and danced before their distended eyes. The Talisman of Set was swept from between the horns of the monstrous Goat, and bouncing down the steps of the chapel, came to rest on the stone flags at De Richleau’s feet.

Mocata staggered back. The Goat reared up on its hind legs above him. A terrible neighing sound came from its nostrils and the slanting eyes swivelled in their sockets; their baleful light flashing round the chamber. The Beast seemed to grow and expand until it was towering above them all as they crouched petrified with fear. The stench of its foetid breath poured from between the bared teeth until they were retching with nausea. Mocata’s knife clattered upon the stones as he raised his arms in frantic terror to defend himself. The awful thing which he had called out of the Pit gave a final screaming neigh and struck him with one of its great fore-hooves. He was thrown with frightful force to the floor, where he lay sprawled head downmost on the chapel steps.

There was a thunderous crash as though the heavens were opening. The crypt ceased to rock and spin. The Satanic figure dissolved in upon itself. For a fraction of time the watchers in the circle saw the black human face of the Malagasy, distorted with pain and rage, where that of the Goat had been before. Then that too disappeared behind a veil of curling smoke.

The black candles on the altar flickered and went out. The chamber remained lit only by the phosphorescent glow from the Talisman. De Richleau had snatched it from the floor and held it in his open hand. By its faint light they saw Fleur sit up. She gave a little wail and slid from the low altar stone to the ground; then she stood gazing towards her mother, yet her eyes were round and sightless like those of one who walks in her sleep.

Suddenly an utter silence beyond human understanding descended like a cloak and closed in from the shadows that were all about them.

Almost imperceptibly a faint unearthly music, coming from some immense distance, reached their ears. At first it sounded like the splashing of spring water in a rock-bound cave, but gradually it grew in volume, and swelled into a strange chant rendered by boys’ voices of unimaginable purity. All fear had gone from them as, one by one, they fell upon their knees and listened entranced to the wonder and the beauty of that litany of praise. Yet all their eyes were riveted on Fleur.

The child walked very slowly forward, but as she advanced, some extraordinary change was taking place about her. The little body, naked a moment before, became clothed in a golden mist. Her shoulders broadened and she grew in height. Her features became partially obscured, then they lost their infant roundness and took on the bony structure of an adult. The diaphanous cloud of light gradually materialised into the graceful folds of a long, yellow, silken robe. The dark curls on the head disappeared leaving a high, beautifully proportioned skull.

As the chant ceased on a great note of exultation all semblance to the child had vanished. In her place a full-grown man stood before them. From his dress he had the appearance of a Tibetan Lama, but his aesthetic face was as much Aryan as Mongolian, blending the highest characteristics of the two; and just as it seemed that he had passed the barriers of race, so he also appeared to have cast off the shackles of worldly time. His countenance showed all the health and vigour of a man in the great years when he has come to full physical development, and yet it had the added beauty which is only seen in that of a frail, scholarly divine who has devoted his whole lifetime to the search for wisdom. The grave eyes which were bent upon them held Strength, Knowledge, and Power, together with an infinite tenderness and angelic compassion unknown to mortal man.

The apparition did not speak by word of mouth. Yet each one of the kneeling group heard the low, silver, bell-like voice with perfect clearness.

‘I am a Lord of Light nearing perfection after many lives. It is wrong that you should draw me from my meditations in the Hidden Valley—yet I pardon you because your need was great. One here has imperilled the flame of Life by seeking to use hidden mysteries for an evil purpose; another also, who lies beyond the waters, has been stricken in her earthly body for that same reason. The love you bear each other has been a barrier and protection, yet would it have availed you nothing had it not been for She who is the Mother. The Preserver harkens ever to the prayer which goes forth innocent of all self-desire and so, for a moment, I am permitted to appear to you through the medium of this child whose thoughts know no impurity. The Adversary has been driven back to the dark Halls of Shaitan and shall trouble you no more. Live out the days of your allotted span. Peace be upon you and about you. Sleep and Return.’

For a moment it seemed that they had been ripped right out of the crypt and were looking down into it. The circle had become a flaming sun. Their bodies were dark shadows grouped in its centre. The peace and silence of death surged over them in great saturating waves. They were above the monastery. The great ruin became a black speck in the distance. Then everything faded.

Time ceased, and it seemed that for a thousand thousand years they floated, atoms of radiant matter in an immense immeasurable void—circling, for ever in the soundless stratosphere —beings shut off from every feeling and sensation, as though travelling with effortless impulse five hundred fathoms deep, below the current levels of some uncharted sea.

Then, after a passage of eons in human time they saw Cardinals Folly again infinitely far beneath them, their bodies lying in the pentacle—and that darkened room. In an utter eerie silence the dust of centuries was falling … falling. Softly, impalpably, like infinitely tiny particles of swansdown it seemed to cover them, the room, and all that was in it, with a fine grey powder.

De Richleau raised his head. It seemed to him that he had been on a long journey and then slept for many days. He passed his hand across his eyes and saw the familiar bookshelves in the semi-darkened library. The bulbs above the cornice flickered and the lights came full on.

He saw that Simon’s eyes were free now from that terrible maniacal glare, but that he still lay bound in the centre of the pentacle.

As he bent forward and hastily began to untie Simon’s hands Marie Lou came round out of her faint. Richard was fondling her and murmuring: ‘We’re safe, darling—safe.’

‘She—she’s not dead—is she?’ It was Rex’s voice, and turning they saw him. Tall—haggard—distraught—a dark silhouette against the early morning light which filtered in through the french windows—bearing Tanith’s body in his arms.

Marie Lou sprang up with a little wailing cry. With Richard behind her she raced across the room and through the door in the wall which concealed the staircase to the nursery.

The Duke hurried over to Rex. Simon kicked his feet free and stood up, exclaiming: ‘I’ve had a most extraordinary dream.

‘About all of us going to Paris?’ asked De Richleau, as the three of them lowered Tanith’s body to the floor, ‘and then on to a ruined monastery in northern Greece?’

‘That’s it—but how—how did you know?’

‘Because I had the same myself—if it was a dream!’

An hysterical laugh came from the stairway and next moment Marie Lou was beside them, great tears streaming down her face, but Fleur clutched safely in her arms.

The child, freshly woken from her sleep, gazed at them with wide, blue eyes, and then she said: ‘Fleur want to go to Simon.’

The Duke was examining Tanith. Simon rose from beside him. His eyes held all the love that surged in the great heart which beat between his narrow shoulders. He covered his short-sighted eyes with his hands for a second then backed away. ‘No, Fleur, darling—I’ve been—I’m still ill you know.’

‘Nonsense—that’s all over,’ Richard cried quickly, ‘go on— for God’s sake take her—Marie Lou’s going to faint.’

‘Oh, Richard! Richard!’ As Simon grabbed the child, Marie Lou swayed towards her husband, and leaning on him drew her fingers softly down his face. ‘I will be all right in a moment—but it was a dream—wasn’t it?’

‘She’s alive!’ exclaimed the Duke suddenly, his hand pressed below Tanith’s heart. ‘Quick, Rex—some brandy.’

‘Of course, dearest,’ Richard was comforting Marie Lou. ‘We’ve never been out of this room—look, except Rex, we are still in pyjamas.’

‘Why, yes—I thought––Oh, but look at this poor girl.’ She slipped from his arms and knelt beside Tanith.

Rex came crashing back with a decanter and a glass. De Richleau snatched the brandy from him. Marie Lou pillowed Tanith’s head upon her knees and Richard held her chin. Between them they succeeded in getting a little of the spirit down her throat; a spasm crossed her face then her eyes opened.

‘Thank God!’ breathed Rex. Thank God.’

She smiled and whispered his name, as the natural colour flooded back into her face.

‘Never—never have I had such a terrible nightmare!’ exclaimed Marie Lou. ‘We were in a crypt—and that awful man was there. He… .’

‘So you dreamed it too!’ Simon interrupted. ‘About you finding me at that warehouse in Asnieres and the Paris police?’

‘That’s it,’ said Richard. ‘It’s amazing that we should all have dreamed the same thing but there’s no other explanation for it. None of us can possibly have left this house since we settled down in the pentacle––Yes, last night!’

‘Then I’ve certainly been dreaming too,’ Rex lifted his eyes for a moment from Tanith’s face. ‘It must have started with me when I fell asleep at the inn—or earlier, for I’d have sworn De Richleau and I were but all the night before careering around half England to stop some devilry.’

‘We were,’ said the Duke slowly. ‘Tanith’s presence here proves that, but she was never dead except in our dream, and that started when you arrived here with her in your arms. The Satanist at Simon’s house, our visit there afterwards, and the Sabbat were all facts. It was only last night, while our bodies slept, that our subconscious selves were drawn out of them to continue the struggle with Mocata on another plane.’

‘Mocata!’ Simon echoed. ‘But—but if we’ve been dreaming he is still alive.’

‘No, he is dead.’ The quiet, sure statement came from Tanith as she sat up, and taking Rex’s hand scrambled to her feet.

‘How is it you’re so certain?’ he asked huskily.

‘I can see him. He is not far from here—lying head downwards on some steps.’

‘That’s how we saw him in the dream,’ said Richard, but she shook her head.

‘No, I had no dream. I remember nothing after Mocata entered my room at the inn and forced me to sleep—but you will find him—somewhere quite near the house—out there.’

‘The age-old law,’ De Richleau murmured. ‘A life for a life and a soul for a soul. Yes, since you have been restored to us I am quite certain that he will have paid the penalty.’

Simon nodded. ‘Then we’re really free of this nightmare at last?’

‘Yes. Dream or no dream, the Lord of Light who appeared to us drove back the Power of Darkness, and promised that we should all live unmolested by it to the end of our allotted span. Come, Richard,’ the Duke took his host’s arm, ‘let us find our coats and take a look round the garden—then we shall have done with this horrible business.’

As they moved away Tanith smiled up at Rex. ‘Did you really mean what you said last night?’

‘Did I mean it!’ he cried, seizing both her hands. ‘Just you let me show you how!’

‘Simon,’ said Marie Lou pointedly, ‘that child will catch her death of cold in nothing but her nightie—do take her back to the nursery while I get the servants to hurry forward breakfast.’ And the old familiar happy smile parted his wide mouth as Fleur took a flying leap into his arms.

Tanith’s face grew a little wistful as Rex drew her to him. ‘My darling,’ she hesitated, ‘you know that it will be only for a little time, about eight months — no more.’

‘Nonsense!’ he laughed. ‘You were certainly dead to all of us last night, so your prophecy’s been fulfilled and the evil lifted — we’re both going to live together for a hundred years.’

She hid her face against his shoulder, not quite believing yet, but a new hope dawning in her heart, from his certainty that she had passed through the Valley of the Shadow and come out again upon the other side. Her happiness, and his, demanded that she accept his view and act henceforth as though the danger to her life was past.

‘Then if you want them, my days are yours,’ she murmured, ‘whatever their number may be.’

There was no trace of fog and a fair, true dawn was breaking when, outside the library windows, De Richleau and Richard found Mocata’s body. It lay on the stone steps which led up to the terrace, sprawling head downwards, in the early light of the May morning.

‘The coroner will find no difficulty in bringing in a verdict,’ the Duke observed after one glance at the face. ‘They’ll say it is heart, of course. It is best not to touch the body, presently we will telephone the police. None of us need say that we have ever seen him before if you tell Malin to keep quiet about his visit yesterday afternoon. You may be certain that his friends will not come forward to mention his acquaintance with Simon or the girl.’

Richard nodded. ‘Yes. “Death of a Man Unknown, from Natural Causes,” will be the only epilogue to this strange story.’

‘Not quite, but this must be between us, Richard. I prefer that the others should not know. Take me to your boiler-house.’

‘The boiler-house — whatever for?’

‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’

‘All right!’ With a puzzled look Richard led the Duke along the terrace, round by the kitchen quarters and into a small building where a furnace gave out a subdued roar.

De Richleau lifted the latch and the door swung back, disclosing the glowing coke within. Then he extended his right fist and slowly opened it.

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘However did you come by that?’

In De Richleau’s palm lay a shrunken, mummified phallus, measuring no more than the length of a little finger, hard, dry, and almost black with age. It was the Talisman of Set, just as they had seen it in their recent dream adorning the brow of the monstrous Goat.

‘I found myself clutching it when I awoke,’ he answered softly.

‘But — but that thing must have come from somewhere!’

‘Perhaps it is a concrete symbol of the evil that we have fought, which has been given over into our hands for destruction.’

As the Duke finished speaking he cast the Talisman into the glowing furnace where they watched until it was utterly consumed.

‘If we were only dreaming how can you possibly explain it?’ Richard insisted.

‘I cannot,’ De Richleau shrugged a little wearily. ‘Even the greatest seekers after Truth have done little more than lift the corner of the veil which hides the vast Unknown, but it is my belief that during the period of our dream journey we have been living in what the moderns call the fourth dimension — divorced from time.’

THE END