The Satanist

Thinking of the flat turned her thoughts to Teddy. It was now six weeks since his death, yet, at times, she still missed him terribly. It was not that he had ever been for her the world's great heart-throb, but he had been gentle, generous and reliable and she had come to count on his companionship. He had been quite good-looking, too, a very adequate if not terribly exciting lover, and always most appreciative of all she did to make their home a place to which he could be proud to bring his friends.

Since he had had so many fine qualities, she wondered now why she had never felt more deeply about him, and decided that probably it was because he had been too transparently good to keep a woman intrigued for long by his personality. It seemed a sad commentary on life that the best men often failed to do so, whereas gay, irresponsible deceivers like Barney Sullivan could so often make women adore them.

It occurred to her then that at least she had Barney left over as a legacy from her abortive investigation into Teddy's murder. Planning the moves for her revenge on him would give her something to think about between the occasional jobs she was getting as a model. She would be seeing him again that night and this time she would give him some encouragement, anyhow to the extent of letting him kiss her.

At midday she got up and cooked herself an egg dish in the tiny kitchenette. It was very sparsely equipped and as she stood at the minute gas-stove she wished, not for the first time, that she were back in her own well-furnished kitchen at Wimbledon. It gave her the idea of going out there. Not to the flat, as by this time it was certain to be occupied by strangers; but she loved the Common. It was a sunny day and now that it was mid-April the silver birches would be putting out their tender young green leaves. The chance of her running into anyone she knew was small; and, suddenly recalling the way in which she had completely changed her appearance, she realized that they would not know her if she did. Anyway, now she had decided to stop playing the detective it was no longer necessary to avoid all contacts with life as Mrs. Morden.

As usual she took ample time to make herself up and dress with care, then she went out and took a bus up to the Green Man on the corner of Putney Heath. Owing to the fine weather there were quite a lot of people about, and twice single men driving slowly by in cars attempted to pick her up. But she was used to such unwelcome attentions when alone and, ignoring them, struck out with her long firm stride across the common. In turn she visited all her favourite spots; the old Windmill, the dell where William Pitt the younger, while Prime Minister, was said to have fought a duel, and the ponds on which the children were sailing their boats.

The fresh air and the long walk did her a power of good, the healthy sights and sounds around her drove from her mind haunting thoughts of the Great Ram, and after making a hearty tea at a little place just off the Common, to which she had been on a few previous occasions, she returned to London in excellent form for her next encounter with Barney.

They had arranged to meet at seven-thirty, and when she arrived at the Hungaria there he was in the foyer looking as devil-may-care as ever, but with an eye-shade over his left eye, and the curve of his cheek below it badly discoloured.

With a slightly amused grimace she said: 'It looks as if you have been mixed up in a fight.'

'I have,' he laughed. 'I'll tell you all about it when you've parked your coat.'

When she came out of the cloakroom he took her downstairs to the cocktail lounge and, as soon as they had ordered drinks, she asked, 'Now! What have you been up to?' 'I hit a man smaller than myself, and got the worst of it!' 'Then you deserved your lesson,' she said, although she did not believe him. He might be a thoroughly bad hat where women were concerned, but she felt certain he was not the type of man to do anything cowardly. All the same, it intrigued her that, instead of producing some cooked-up story about having defended a child or a dog against ill-treatment by a gang of toughs, he should elect to pretend to have been in the wrong.

'As a matter of fact,' he told her with a lopsided grin, 'I got it in a free-for-all. Last night some pals of mine suggested that we should try our luck at a gambling joint that one of them knew of up in St. John's Wood. After a bit of a binge we went along there and played chemi for a while. Of course the game was rigged, as it always is in those sort of places; but the bloke who runs it made it a bit too obvious that he took us all for suckers. When we caught him out red-handed, we decided to break the place up. By ill luck I found myself up against the chucker-out. He was only a little runt of a man, but I suppose he had served in the Commandoes or something. Anyhow, before I knew what was happening, he had given me this whopper, and a couple of minutes later he bundled me out into the street.' The truth was very different. The previous night he had attended a Union meeting down in Shoreditch and come up against one of the casual risks inseparable from his investigation.

His work entailed his covering the activities of several Branches, each of a different Union, for all of which his office had provided him with forged membership cards, and he could, at most, have taken a regular job in the area of only one of them. Since it would have been pointless to devote eight hours a day to working as a docker, busman or some other category of labourer, having told the Secretary at each branch that he had recently come to London from Ireland for family reasons, he had registered himself at them all as unemployed and since skilfully evaded, on one excuse or another, taking such jobs as had been offered him.

The Party ticket he carried was evidence enough for the Communist members on the committees of the Branches to which he belonged that he was to be trusted, but to induce them actually to confide in and make use of him, he had lost no opportunity of putting himself forward at every meeting he attended as an active trouble-maker. It followed that the more conservative members of the branches had come to regard him as the type of hot-head who is a menace to regular employment and good relations with the bosses. The night before, on his leaving the meeting, three such anti-Communists had followed and later tackled him in an ill-lit street. They had charged him with being a 'professional out-of-work' and a 'bloody agitator' who wanted to see everyone else out of work in support of his Communist opinions. Then, while two of them had stood by, the third stalwart, a man with the build of a blacksmith, whom they referred to as 'good old Ed', had made him put his fists up and sailed into him.

As Barney was nowhere near the weight of his opponent, and in such circumstances pulling one of the fast tricks he knew was out of the question, he had had the sense to let himself be knocked down early in the encounter; so he had got off fairly lightly. Actually, too, he was more sorry for the man who had attacked him than for himself, since the two other men who had been present might talk about 'old Ed's' exploit; so he dared not refrain from reporting the affair to his Communist friends on the committee, which meant for certain that they would put 'old Ed's' name on their black list and, sooner or later, find an excuse to victimize him.

Mary, of course, knew nothing of all this, and she readily accepted Barney's story of the gambling joint, because it fitted in with the picture of him, as an unprincipled young roisterer, that she knew of old. After a moment, she remarked with a smile:

'See what comes of being one of the idle rich and staying up half the night to throw your money about.'

'Have a heart!' he protested. 'I'm only one of those poor Irish Earls who has to get his robes out of pop when there's a coronation. As for being idle, I spent hours and hours last week trying to persuade Civil Aircraft lines to run tourist flights to Kenya.' He then launched into an account of established flight schedules and the numbers of passengers carried, from information he had mugged up since last they had met, the better to establish his cover-story with her.

After a second cocktail they went up to the restaurant, and she told him about two model shows for which she had been booked in the coming week; but all the time she was wondering why he had not yet asked her about her meeting with Ratnadatta. At length the temptation to broach the subject proved too strong for her and she said, a shade coldly: 'It seems you are no longer interested in learning how I got on last night.'

He had deliberately refrained in order to pique her, and now he laughed. 'I guessed you were bursting to tell me; so I've been holding out on you. But to tell the truth I'm itching to hear, and near as damn it gave you best only a moment ago. How's the form for your becoming a pretty white nanny goat and me a big black toad?'

'In your case, pretty good,' she replied lightly, 'though you needn't flatter yourself I'd have you as my familiar. Last night Mr. Ratnadatta took me to a place in Chelsea and gave me dinner upstairs in a private room!'

'What!' he exclaimed. 'Of all the nerve! And you let him?'

'Why not? He is a nice little man, and extremely learned.'

'Nice little man, my foot!' Barney stuck his chin out aggressively. 'He's a smarmy no-good Babu. It was damned impertinent of him to take you to a place like that, and I'd like to kick his learned bottom.'

'Really Barney!' It was the first time she had used his Christian name, although he had asked her to when she had dined with him the previous Thursday. 'You sound as though you had only just climbed out of the bog. It's silly to take such a primitive view of it. He wanted to tell me about the secret doctrine and he couldn't do that in a restaurant with other people nearby who might overhear him.'

'Oh, all right then. What had he to say about it?'

For the best part of half-an-hour, between mouthfuls of food and wine, she gave him the highlights of Ratnadatta's discourse, and as they discussed them Barney had to agree that much of it made sense. Just after the main course they had chosen - a Hungarian goulash - had been served, he enquired: 'And when you had finished dinner, what happened then?'

She gave her sweetest smile. 'He took me to a Satanic temple.'

'The little swine! That's just what I feared he might do. Still, it seems you came to no harm, otherwise you wouldn't be looking so cheerful.'

'No; I enjoyed it. I found it absolutely fascinating.'

Barney was on the point of giving way to an outburst but, his duty coming uppermost in his mind, he checked it and asked, 'Whereabouts was this place?'

'I've no idea,' she replied lightly. 'He took me to and from it in a taxi, and both ways he insisted on putting a bandage over my eyes. Going there took a long time and for no very, good reason I got the impression that it was somewhere in north-east London. But I'm sure the distance we covered coming back was much shorter, and when he dropped me at Hyde Park Corner the taxi had just come up the slope from Knightsbridge; so it may be anywhere.'

'You must have seen something of it when you got out of the taxi. What was it like outside?'

'It was an old Georgian mansion with a high wall all round it, except for its front; and there it faced on to a semi-private courtyard. But it was in the heart of a slum district. That's all I can tell you.'

'That doesn't get us far. In a great area like London there must be dozens of derelict places like that in districts that have gradually deteriorated into slums.'

'Oh, but it wasn't derelict. Inside it was beautifully decorated, and furnished in keeping with its period.'

'That doesn't surprise me. Those sort of crooks have oodles of money. What happened after you arrived there?' . For a second Mary hesitated. She had not forgotten Ratnadatta's threat that he and his friends would know about it if she betrayed their secrets, and take steps to exact a grim penalty. But now that she had made up her mind to break with them, and would soon have lost touch with him altogether, she felt that she need no longer take serious notice of his threat. Besides, she was thoroughly enjoying Barney's reactions to the dangers she had courted and was tempted by the urge to see him becoming more wrought up on her account.

'Well,' she said, 'if I do tell you I must ask you to keep it to yourself. You see, I'm not supposed to speak about these people's doings to anyone, and if it leaked out that I had they might make trouble for me.'

'I fully appreciate that,' he nodded. 'So the last thing you need be afraid of is that I'd let you down.'

'All right then. He took me up to a gallery where without being seen we could look down on the interior of the temple. There were about thirty men and women in it, all masked and wearing only gossamer-thin cloaks, through which one could see absolutely everything.'

Barney's face had become grim, and he muttered, 'That's more or less the kind of form I expected. But, damn it all, Margot! You mustn't let yourself get involved further in this sort of thing. You really mustn't!'

'I don't know.' She gave a shrug that implied sophisticated detachment. 'I haven't yet quite made up my mind. I wouldn't have missed this show last night for anything. By comparison, the sort of things one sees at Mrs. Wardeel's are child's play. Ratnadatta and his friends really can call down power, and I'm awfully tempted to go with him again next Saturday. It depends on whether I can screw up my courage to go through the initiation ceremony.'

'What form does it take? Something pretty beastly, I bet.'

'Not necessarily. But once in, I might be expected to take part in the, er - social activities of the Brotherhood.'

'I don't quite get you?'

'Well, Ratnadatta let me watch them do their serious stuff, but then he said that I'd seen quite enough for a first visit. Just as we were leaving they were about to sit down to a feast, and I've rather uneasy suspicions about the kind of fun and games they may have got up to afterwards.'

'Suspicions! Be your age, Margot! You'd get yourself raped for a certainty.'

She turned her big blue eyes on him with an innocent look. 'D'you really think so?�

'Of course I do! You mustn't even think of going to this place again. You've got nothing to offer them except your body, and that's what they're after. They might even dope and white-slave you. Let's hear now about what you did see - their serious stuff?'

With secret amusement at his agitation, Mary replied: 'First of all they made their reports to the High Priest about what they had been up to since last attending a meeting. He looked a charming old man; the sort of priest that no woman would mind confessing anything to. Then, after a long period of silence, came the manifestations of genuine occult power. Somehow, I didn't see exactly how it happened, but the Arch-Priest of the Brotherhood appeared from some curtains that hung behind the altar.

'They all seemed a bit scared of him, and so was I. Apparently he is the big-shot of a world-wide organization, and only in London on a visit. The greater part of his face was hidden under a horned headdress, he was dressed in black tights - just as one sees pictures of the Devil - and he was wearing a fortune in jewels. He listened to the requests made by the congregation, and granted nearly all of them what they asked for - beauty, ways to make money, restoration of sight and all sorts of other favours and cures.'

Barney stopped eating and a slow smile spread over his face as he said, 'Oh, come on; you're pulling my leg?'

'No, really! And after that there came the most extraordinary and terrifying thing of all. A small cloud of smoke formed down at his feet and from it there materialized a hideous black imp.' While she was speaking, Barney had picked up from in front of him the wicker cradle in which lay the bottle of Burgundy they were drinking with their goulash. With his other hand he took her glass and refilled it. As she was about to take it from him, somehow, they fumbled it. At the moment she said the word 'imp', the glass slipped from between their hands and precipitated the whole of its contents into her lap.

With exclamations of dismay, both of them stood up. A passing waiter quickly pulled out the table and muttered expressions of sympathy while Mary hurried off to the ladies' room. The splashed table cloth was replaced, the remains of the goulash taken away and fresh places laid.

Mary was furious. As an aid to her designs to ensnare Barney she had put on her best semi-evening frock. It was brand new, and of a yellow material which she had chosen because, now that she was a brunette, she knew that the colour would set off her dark beauty to perfection.

In the cloakroom she quickly wriggled out of it and the attendant did her best to remove the stain by sponging with hot water. But when they had rough-dried it in front of an electric fire, the edge of the great circular splodge, where the wine had soaked in, was still plainly visible, and to their dismay they found that some of the wine having trickled through between Mary's legs, there was a smaller stain on the back of the skirt. As the wine there had had longer to penetrate the material, sponging the place had less effect and the woman glumly declared that she doubted if even proper cleaning would get it out.

Conscious of the many pairs of eyes taking stock of her misfortune as she recrossed the restaurant twenty minutes later, and still seething with rage, Mary rejoined Barney. He accepted the blame, and apologized profusely. She, out of good manners, did her best to make light of the matter and said that it had been her fault; but she was unable, altogether, to conceal her annoyance, and when new portions of goulash were served to them she petulantly told the waiter to take hers away as she had had enough.

Barney ate some of his in an uncomfortable silence; then in an endeavour to take her mind off her misfortune, he said: 'I didn't really mean it when I said I thought you were pulling my leg. Do go on and tell me more about the extraordinary things you saw last night. You'd got as far as the appearance of the black imp.'

As though she had received a mild electric shock, Mary stiffened slightly. It had flashed into her mind that the spilling of the wine might not have been an ordinary accident. In defiance of Ratnadatta's warning, she had been giving away the secrets of the Brotherhood. Was it possible that she was being overlooked and some occult force had been set in motion to check her? Thinking about it again she knew that the mishap had been more her fault than Barney's, because it was through her hand that the glass had actually slipped. Momentarily it had seemed as if her fingertips had lost their sense of touch, and next second the wine had cascaded into her lap. Suddenly she felt convinced that the temporary paralysis, although it had come and gone in less time than it takes to draw breath, could have been caused only by supernatural means.

Striving to conceal the fear with which the thought filled her, she stammered: The ... the imp! Yes, I... I. But, of course, I was pulling your leg. There was no imp or priest who used it to perform an abortion. . . .'

Barney shot her a swift, shocked suspicious glance and broke in, 'You never mentioned that.'

'Oh . . . didn't I? Well, it doesn't matter. I was making the whole thing up. I mean about them all wearing masks but having no clothes on, and about an Arch-Priest they called the Great Ram performing miracles.'

'D'you mean that? Honestly?'

'Of course.' She forced a smile. 'I was just seeing how much I could get you to swallow.'

He smiled back. 'I boggled at the miracles, and the black-clad gent producing an imp was a bit too much; but you sold me the general set-up. Anyhow, praise be to God you were only fooling. What did Ratnadatta's game turn out to be after all, though?'

'It was as I thought - Yoga.' Mary quickly tried to recall the little she had heard about Yoga, and went on: 'It really was rather thrilling. One of them, wearing only a loin cloth, lay down on a bed of nails, and another walked on live coals without burning his feet. It can be of practical use, too, if one works at it hard enough. Ratnadatta swears to me that through having learnt to breathe in a certain way he can keep himself warm on the coldest day without wearing an overcoat. It is also the royal road to getting out of one's body; so I mean to take up practising the exercises.'

'Does that mean that you are going to this place again next Saturday?'

Mary still had no intention of doing so; but the temptation to re-arouse Barney's concern for her, even to a more limited extent, led her to reply, 'Yes, why not?�

His reaction was just what she had hoped for. 'And that, I suppose, commits you to having dinner again in a private room with this slimy Babu?�

Recalling all she had told him of Ratnadatta's arguments in support of the ancient worship of Satan as the Lord of this World, she suddenly saw the red light. That did not fit in with the new aspect she had given the Indian as an innocent practitioner of Yoga. To forestall Barney's possibly asking her to explain this obvious contradiction in the story she was now anxious that he should believe, she said:

'I was fooling about that, too. We dined downstairs in the restaurant, and next Saturday he is not even giving me dinner. I'm not to meet him at the Sloane Square Tube until half-past nine.'

'What about his blindfolding you, though? Did he, or was that just another taradiddle to get a rise out of me?'

Mary saw that she was cornered. As she had no idea in what part of London the temple was situated, she could not tell him its locality; on the other hand, to admit that she had been blindfolded was to imply that there really was something sinister about it. In desperation, her nerves still barely under control, she exclaimed:

'Oh, for goodness' sake leave it! You've no right to catechize me about where I go or what I do.'

'Sorry,' said Barney, 'but seeing we're friends, I'm naturally interested.'

For a few minutes they ploughed into the Peach Melba that they had chosen as a pudding. When they had finished, Barney said: 'Come on, let's dance.'

His proposal brought back to her the stained condition of her frock. 'How can I?' she snapped. 'The wine not only went through to my belt, but dripped off it on to the back of my skirt; so both from the rear as well as from the front, I look a shocking sight.'

For a moment Barney considered whether he ought to offer to buy her a new dress. But he decided that as this was only the second time he had taken her out, he did not know her well enough, and she might regard the suggestion as an impertinence. After a moment he said, a shade resentfully:

'I'm terribly sorry about your dress. But really it wasn't my fault. I handed your glass to you and you seemed to be gripping it firmly before I let go of it.'

Again the terrifying image of the imp came into her mind. Renewed fear mingled with resentment caused her to give an angry shrug. 'What's it matter whose fault it was? My dress is ruined anyway; and I'm not going to make an exhibition of myself just to please you.'

Barney also had an Irish temper and at this, as he felt, unjustified attack on him, he said: 'Well, if you don't want to talk, and you won't dance, there's not much point in our remaining here, is there?�

'No,' she agreed. 'And the sooner I can get my dress into soak the better chance there will be of the stains not showing after I've had it dyed a less attractive colour.'

'O.K. Let's go then!' Abruptly he stood up and pulled out the table for her. 'Go and get your coat. I'll settle the bill later.'

She had hardly had time to think before he put her into a taxi. And he did not follow her into it. He gave the driver her address and some silver then, with a casual wave, he wished her an unsmiling 'good night' and stalked off back into the restaurant. They had been on edge with one another for three-quarters of an hour, but when the blow-up came it lasted less than four minutes. On her way home Mary cursed herself whole-heartedly. She had meant to play the siren with Barney that evening, and so convert the interest he had shown in her from the first into a much warmer feeling. But now, for the second time, she had behaved in a manner which could only lead him to believe that, attractive as her looks might make her, she was so stupid, prudish, and naturally ill-tempered that it would be folly to cultivate her further. From the manner in which he had left her, it was clear that he did not mean to ask her out again.

Since she had lost Teddy everything had gone wrong. She had given up her home, and the friends who might have comforted her, to set out on a wild-goose chase; or at least one that fear had forced her to abandon. And now she had thrown away the last human link which could provide her with an interest. She was, and must continue to be for some time to come, as utterly alone in the world as if she had become marooned on a desert island. Unless, far worse, when she least expected it, Ratnadatta appeared on the scene to exact payment from her for having ignored his warning. Her day had started with such promise, yet ended with catastrophe. That night she wept herself to sleep.

CHAPTER VIII A PREY TO LONELINESS

The saying that 'hope springs eternal in the human breast' certainly applies to most healthy people, and there was nothing in the least wrong with Mary, either mentally or physically. In consequence, after a sound sleep, she began to view her situation more cheerfully. The occult manifestations she had witnessed on Saturday night were of a potency sufficient to have struck terror into anyone's mind; so it was hardly to be wondered at that only twenty-four hours later her nerves were still so jumpy that she had accepted an accident as evidence that the Brotherhood was keeping watch on her by supernatural means, and had the power to make her let drop a glass of wine.

But when she had woken and thought about the matter for a while, she decided that she had panicked unnecessarily. For the Satanists to keep a round-the-clock watch on her, they would need to employ a whole team of clairvoyants, and surely that was rating her importance to them much too high? To suppose that when anyone was about to betray their secrets an occult alarm bell rang to inform them of it was hardly credible; and, if they did have some such telepathic control, why should they have let her go on for several minutes describing the temple, its congregation and the things she had seen happen in it, before stopping her? On top of that the idea that they had the power temporarily to paralyse her fingertips from a distance seemed altogether too fantastic. The truth of the matter must be that she had simply been careless in taking the glass, and the fact that she had dropped it just as she was on the point of telling Barney about the black imp had been no more than a coincidence.

Much comforted by this logical banishing of her overnight fears, while she lay in her bath she sought again for some interest to occupy her mind now that she had abandoned her crusade to bring Teddy's murderer to justice, and some weeks must elapse before she could restore her old appearance to a point when she could take up once more, without embarrassment, with the people they had known.

The modelling work on which she had started only recently had, as yet, brought her few new acquaintances. It would bring more in time, but she knew that the majority of the men in the so-called 'rag' trade regarded the models they employed only as dummies to display clothes on, and the girls themselves, enjoying a much higher than average standard of good looks, all had either husbands or numerous boy-friends, who kept them fully occupied.

The previous night she had resigned herself to having lost Barney and had not been able to make up her mind if she was glad or sorry. Despite her long nurtured grievance against him, while in his company she enjoyed his gay, intelligent conversation and, subconsciously, was still strongly attracted to him physically. To know that she would not now have the satisfaction of making him fall for her, then being thoroughly beastly to him, was a sad disappointment; but she tried to console herself with the thought that two wrongs did not make a right, so perhaps it was as well that her plan to avenge herself on him had been nipped in the bud.

Yet the thought of him was like a worrying tooth and as she lay in her bath she toyed with the idea of trying to get in touch with him. Had she known his address she would have written him a line of apology for her behaviour, and so tried to start the ball rolling between them again that way, but she did not. It then occurred to her that he would be in the telephone book; so. getting out of the bath, she dried herself quickly and got the book, but no Lord Larne was listed in it. Throwing it down she upbraided herself for a fool for having even bothered to look, as she ought to have realized that, having no right to the title, he would not have had the face to use it publicly. That settled the matter. She must accept it that he had once more gone out of her life.

The only other people she had met after changing her personality to Margot Mauriac were those who attended the meetings at Mrs. Wardeel's. She now knew several of them by name and could, if she chose, develop a friendship with them. As they were nearly all considerably older than herself, and earnest seekers after truth, that would not prove very exciting. But at the thought of whole days, when she had no modelling engagements, spent in aimless window-gazing, and with no prospect in the evening but going to a cinema on her own, she decided that such human contacts would be better than nothing.

She had not meant to go to Mrs. Wardeel's again, because that would entail meeting Ratnadatta. But if the spilling of the wine had been, as she was now convinced, a normal accident, she had nothing to fear from him. Instead of simply not keeping her appointment with him next Saturday she would tell him on Tuesday night that, having thought the matter over, she had now decided that she was still too conventionally minded to prove a suitable candidate for initiation into his Brotherhood.

She began to wonder then if, from anger at her having wasted his time, he might bring some form of trouble on her. But suddenly a new thought entered her mind. Barney would be at the meeting too. Why hadn't she thought of that before? Here was her chance to recapture him. She would get him to walk home with her afterwards, tell him that as a compensation for having spoilt his evening on Saturday she had prepared a little supper for them, and bring him up to her flat.

The more she thought over this new plan, the more it pleased her, and the urge she felt to carry it out soon overcame her vague fears of meeting Ratnadatta again. That afternoon she went up to the West-End to model some swim-suits for the coming summer season, and in the evening thoroughly enjoyed a film. Tuesday she had no engagement; so she spent the morning turning out her sitting-room and in the afternoon spread herself at Harrods, buying smoked Westphalian ham, cold salmon, materials for a salad, cheese straws and fruit. As she laid the table she again regretted her own much nicer things at Wimbledon, but she had bought plenty of flowers to make the room gay and the wine-salesman had assured her that the bottle of Hock he had recommended was really good.

Filled with happy anticipation, she set off for Mrs. Wardeel's and arrived there a little before eight o'clock. When she entered the lecture room neither Barney nor Ratnadatta had arrived. The latter did so just before the proceedings started, but Barney had still not put in an appearance.

The lecture that evening was on Maya religious beliefs and how they tied up with Theosophy, but she hardly took in a word of it. Every few minutes she looked towards the door, hoping that she would see Barney slip in and quietly take a seat at the back; but her hopes were disappointed.

She then tried to persuade herself that, having heard the subject of the lecture at the last meeting, he thought it would bore him, so meant to come later in time only to see another medium perform. But the lecture finished, the chairs were arranged in a circle, and still he did not come.

On this occasion the medium was a tall, thin man. Having taken his chair in the middle of the circle, he was wrapped up to the chin by Mrs. Wardeel in a voluminous sheet, then two members of the audience were chosen to assure the rest that no hidden wires or other apparatus had been connected in his vicinity. All the lights, except for one small bulb, were turned off, the spectators linked hands with their neighbours, there was a long, long silence during which nothing happened, then a gentle radiance in the neighbourhood of the medium's mouth became perceptible.

Gradually it increased until the whole of the lower part of his face could be seen by it. Opening his mouth wide he began to breathe stertorously and a pale yellow foam formed round the inside of his lips. The foam increased until it became a solid bubble, hiding both his upper and lower teeth and his tongue. For a while the bubble ballooned and deflated in time with his breathing, and as he strove to force it out the radiance was sufficient to show that sweat was streaming down his face. At last it lapped over, covering his chin then, looking like a thick band of dough, slowly made its way down the slope of the sheet that covered his chest until it reached the level of his stomach. There it stopped, but more and more of the stuff oozed down till a lump as large as a medium-sized melon had formed. The lump flattened out and five roundish points began to protrude from it. These lengthened until the whole thing had roughly the shape of a huge hand attached by a curved arm to the medium's mouth.

Mary had never before seen an occultist project ectoplasm, and cause it to take on the likeness of human limbs or a rudimentary human body; so normally she would have been much impressed by the strange exhibition. But having, three nights before, witnessed the far more hair-raising spectacle of the Great Ram conjuring up a cloud of smoke that turned into a perfectly formed manikin capable of movement, although unattached to him, she found the long slow performance somewhat wearisome. Moreover, her mind was still on Barney and his failure to attend the meeting.

When they had last dined together, he had frankly declared his disbelief in the genuineness of the medium they had seen the week before, so she thought it possible that scepticism about Mrs. Wardeel's parties as a whole had decided him against giving any more of his evenings to attending them. But she was more inclined to believe that, feeling certain she would be there, he had refrained from coming so as to avoid any possibility of being drawn into a resumption of their, so far, most unsatisfactory, tentative moves towards entering on an affair.

Her disappointment was naturally proportionate to the hours she had given to musing over the way in which that evening she would make Barney take a much better view of her, and those she had spent in preparing that delightful little supper. But by the time the medium had re-absorbed his ectoplasm she had made herself face up to it that, if it was to avoid meeting her again that Barney had failed to attend this meeting, the odds were all against his coming to the one next week, so she would be wise to write him off for good and all.

When the party moved into the dining-room for coffee, Ratnadatta sidled up to her, gave his toothy smile and said in a low voice: 'Mrs. Mauriac, I haf another person with weech I wish to talk here tonight. But I also wish to talk with you. As it ees private matter, better that we talk in street; so plees I walk part off way home with you.'

His friendly greeting at first confirmed her belief that she had nothing to fear from him; but his words sent a sudden chill through her. Perhaps he did know that she had spoken of the Brotherhood to Barney. If so, his proposal to walk home with her suggested that he wanted to get her on his own in a situation where he could do her some injury. Then, after a moment, she dismissed the idea as highly improbable, and reassured herself with the thought that, anyway, he would not be such a fool as to attempt to harm her while walking through a respectable district at an hour when there would still be plenty of people about on whom she could call for help.

Taking her consent for granted, he had left her at once and quickly attached himself to a heavily made up, middle-aged woman, wearing valuable jewels, whom Mary had not seen there before, and he remained talking to her for the next twenty minutes. Meanwhile a retired General, who had singled Mary out on a previous occasion, brought her a coffee and sought to entertain her with an account of marvels he had seen Fakirs perform in India many years before she was born.

When the party began to break up, the bejewelled lady took herself off, Ratnadatta rejoined Mary, listened with her to a final story by the General, then tactfully prised her away from him. Five minutes later they were walking side by side towards the central stretch of the Cromwell Road, and he said:

'I haf forgot to tell you that when we meet on Saturday you must wear no make-up. None at all, you understand? Scrub your face clean. Also your hair must be done as plainly as possible, scrag back flat with ends done as bun at back off head.'

Mary gave him an astonished look, then faltered: 'As a matter of fact, Mr. Ratnadatta, I... I've been thinking things over and I... well, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really advanced enough to accept initiation yet.'

In turn he shot a surprised look at her. But his voice held no trace of anger as he replied: 'Initiation! You haf flatter yourself. At best some time must pass before you can hope for so much. First stage ees neophyte. Acceptance on probation only, after taking oath of loyalty to the Brotherhood. Next the neophyte must perform some act for token off willing service. ...'

He had been about to go on, but she cut in quickly, 'Do you mean that in the case of a woman it is then that she performs her service to the temple by, er- offering herself to a stranger?' 'No, no.' He shook his head. 'That does not come until initiation. It ees part off the initiation rite. By act off willingness I refer to performing satisfactorily some work for furtherance off aims off the Brotherhood weech the neophyte is giffen order to do by our High Priest Abaddon. Only by passing such test does a neophyte become qualified for initiation.'

They walked the next fifty yards in silence, while Mary was thinking, 'It looks, then, as if I could go with him again to the Temple next Saturday without having anything much to be afraid of. If they had designs on me the last thing they would want is for me to do my hair up in a bun and make myself look like a scarecrow. And it would give me one more chance to see if I can learn from them anything about Teddy.' Yet caution urged her to try to find out a little more before committing herself; so aloud she asked: 'What exactly would I have to do to be accepted as a neophyte?�

'I haf already tell you,' he replied a shade impatiently. 'You promise obedience to our High Priest and take oath to keep secrets off the Brotherhood. Then you are welcomed and well-wished by all present and ceremony is concluded. The rite takes only a quarter-of-an-hour - perhaps twenty minutes.'

'And afterwards?' she enquired.

'Why, as you are not initiate, you must go home, off course. I take you again to Hyde Park Corner. You wait then two, three, perhaps four weeks, till occasion arise when Abaddon has use for you, and requires from you token act off willing service.'

'What would happen if I failed in that?'

'You would haf lost your chance to become initiate. Most regrettable; for whatever you may feel yourself, I know you to be ready for advancement. But there ees no reason why you should fail. The task provided ees always suitable for the neophyte to weech it ees given.'

Now that he had made it clear to her beyond all question that she must still pass through two preliminary stages before having finally to commit herself, she felt very differently about the matter from the way she had on getting home from her visit to the Temple the previous Saturday night. The thought of the long empty days and lonely evenings that lay ahead of her played their part, and once more there rose in her the urge to try to find out about Teddy.

'Very well, then,' she said impulsively. 'To be honest, I was a bit scared and meant to back out. But I don't mind going through this short ceremony if I am to be given plenty of time to get used to the thought of facing the big one. So I'll meet you as we arranged on Saturday.'

'Good; very good,' said Mr. Ratnadatta.

CHAPTER IX A FIENDISH PLOT

The following morning, while Mary was disconsolately making a late breakfast of the Westphalian ham she had bought as a first dish for the supper at which she had planned to entertain Barney, Colonel Verney was already in his office hard at work sorting the papers in his 'In' tray. On the previous Monday he had had to attend a N.A.T.O. conference in Naples; so he had flown down to Nice on Friday night, in order to spend the weekend with his wife, gone on to Naples and got back only the night before. He had found Molly in good form and had thoroughly enjoyed relaxing among the orange trees and oleanders in the garden of their villa. Such breaks he knew to be a sound insurance against strain from overwork but, all the same, they had to be paid for on his return by an accumulation of matters requiring his attention.

Putting the longer documents aside he dealt first with letters needing a prompt answer; then, having sent his secretary off to type them, he got down to an hour's reading of reports. Among them there was one from Squadron-Leader Forsby. In a brief letter he said only that Otto Khune's behaviour during the past week had continued much as before and as yet gave no grounds for suspicion that he was communicating with any questionable person. But sometime during the week he had completed the account of his past, and a copy of it, which had been taken after a further search of his quarters, carried out when he was absent from the Station on Sunday, was enclosed. Spreading out the typescript, Verney read:

It was in May 1950 that, after an interval of eight years, I again saw my brother Lothar. I was at the time living with my wife Dinah at Farnborough, and engaged, as an official of the Ministry of Supply, in tabulating the results of new fuels then being tested at the Experimental Aircraft Establishment there.

We occupied a pleasant little house on the outskirts of the town, had made a number of friends in the neighbourhood, and our life was a very happy one until, early in May, I began to be plagued by constant thoughts of Lothar.

For a long time past, thoughts of him had come to me only infrequently. I was aware, although it had never been confirmed as a fact by a communication from him or any other source, that he was in the U.S.S.R., and now content to carry on his scientific work there under his Russian masters in one of their research establishments. It distressed me that he should be working for the Communists, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I had come to accept it that, as our paths in life had diverged so widely, it was unlikely that we should ever meet again.

Yet, having once more started to think about him, try as I would I could not get him out of my mind. In fact, I became the victim of a mental disturbance of the same nature as that I have suffered recently. I found that I could no longer concentrate fully on my work or take pleasure in the social life that my wife and I had been leading. Then too, as now, I gradually became convinced that Lothar was in England and wished to see me.

My visions of him increased in clarity until I became familiar with the surroundings in which he was living. He had two rooms on the ground floor of a rather shoddy apartment house. It was number 94, in a long dreary street which I knew to be in North London somewhere beyond St. Pancras Station. The next development was my becoming aware of the way to find it on starting from the Station, and that Lothar was willing me to come there to meet him.

I knew instinctively that no good could come from such a meeting; so for some days I resisted the urge to go there. But Lothar gave me no peace; and both Dinah and my fellow employees at the research station became greatly alarmed by my mental condition. They said that at times I talked as if I were a different person, and urged me to see a doctor.

To have done so would have been futile. Medical science now accepts telepathy, but I doubt if any doctor would have believed my story and, even if he had, it would have been beyond his power to help me. The probability is that he would have had me put into a mental home, if only for a period of observation, and, as that could have brought me no relief, I were not prepared to submit to it.

At length, towards the end of the month, on May 26, to be exact, I decided that, if I was not to lose my job owing to a complete breakdown, I must give way to Lothar's urging. So I took the day off and went up to London.

From St. Pancras I had no difficulty in finding the street in which Lothar had his rooms, and it proved in all respects precisely the same as I had seen it in my visions. On going up the steps of No. 94, I saw that the front door was ajar. Walking in I entered the first room on the right. As I had felt certain he would be, he was sitting there and expecting me.

To begin with, my fears that such a meeting would bring misfortune on myself were stilled, because he greeted me with great affection; and few people can exercise more charm than Lothar when he is in a mood to do so. I learned that he had periodically overlooked me and so had followed the outline of my career just as I had his. He had known of my marriage and that I had left the United States to settle in Britain, and was aware of the type of work that I was then employed upon; and he confirmed my belief that he had gone by way of South America to Germany, been captured by the Russians at Peenemunde and later reconciled himself to continuing his scientific research on rocket development under the Soviet Government.

It was this, he admitted frankly, that had been his main reason for not having got into touch with me openly, as he had entered Britain by clandestine means and, to minimize the risk of being found out, left his lodging only when the mission he had come upon necessitated his doing so. His other reason was that, since we still resembled one another so closely, it would have been impossible for him to conceal the fact that he was my twin and, as I had no doubt told my wife that he had deserted the Allied cause during the war, for him to have turned up at Farnborough might have greatly embarrassed me.

He produced a bottle of wine, and over it we talked for a long while about our youth in Chicago and our devotion to one another in those days, then of the lives we had made for ourselves in Russia and Britain respectively. From what he told me it was clear that upper-crust scientists fared far better there than here. We were then thirty-two years of age and he was already receiving an emolument in the form of excellent accommodation, transport, holiday, and priority goods vouchers which, added to his cash salary, enabled him to live at a standard that, with British taxation at its present level, I could never hope to equal.

It was this which led me to make some remark to the effect that not only had the men in the Kremlin abandoned all attempts to make the Marxist ideology work in practice, but they were deliberately creating a new aristocracy with such cynical disregard for even a semblance of equality that Britain's Welfare State brought her much nearer to being a Communist society than the revolution had Russia.

He entirely agreed, remarking that true Communism could never work in any country and, realizing that, although they could not openly admit it, the men in the Kremlin had, in fact, become Nazis. It was that which made him willing and happy to work for them. He went on to say that he still believed the Hitler doctrines to be the only ones by which, in the modern world, the masses could be made to work the hours they should and be controlled effectively; that, by the application of those doctrines, power could be concentrated in a few hands in a way that was impossible in the democracies, and that power ultimately used to establish a world order - call it Communism or anything else one liked - ruled over by a single governing body.

When that day came, he declared with complete self-confidence, he meant to be a member of it - and it would not be many years in coming. The Western Powers could not compete effectively in the armaments race because the expenditure of their governments was limited by the reluctance of the voters, to whom they had to go, cap in hand, to retain power, to provide sufficient money; and as each of them, again at the dictation of these masses, had to place the individual interests of their countries before those of maintaining a united front, capitalist-democracy was doomed. Innumerable jealousies and divergent policies inherited from the past could be made afresh into bones of contention and played up into serious national issues, which would keep them from ever combining wholeheartedly; so, one way and another, when Russia struck they would be incapable of mobilizing even a third of their potential strength against her.

Power, he contended, was the only thing really worth haying. And what could equal playing a part in decreeing the way of life to be followed by the whole human race when the new World State was established? He meant to do so, and out of his old affection for me he wished me to share his exalted station.

It then transpired that the object of his visit, which was being kept secret even from all but one high official at the Soviet Embassy, was to take me back to Russia with him. He said that immediate employment could be arranged for me with a remuneration which would enable me to enjoy many luxuries that I could not afford here, and that if I wished it my wife could be brought over later to join me. But that was only the beginning of the programme. He was already well on the way up the ladder to political power and in due course would have a special use for me. What exactly that was, he would not specify; but it hinged upon the fact that, as identical twins, once I became fluent in Russian we could easily pass for one another.

Even while he was still describing this, apparently, alluring prospect to me, I had made up my mind to refuse. Quite apart from the fact that I believe enslavement and the destruction of individuality, which is the policy of the Soviet Government, to be the most evil fate that could befall mankind, and that I am a loyal British subject with a deep sense of gratitude for the freedom and security I enjoy as a naturalized citizen of this country, I was not in the least tempted to accept temporary affluence as the price of the uncertainties of aiding him in his political career in Russia. Brilliant as I knew Lothar to be, there could be no guarantee that his ambitions would not bring him up against some, perhaps, less gifted but more powerful rival; then, as there were plenty of examples to show, it would need only one slip by him on some interpretation of Marxist doctrine for us both to land up in Siberia, or even find ourselves facing a firing squad.

On my declining his proposal he tried sweet reason and, exerting all his charm and will-power, argued with me for over an hour. Then, finding that I still stood firm, his manner changed and he began to threaten me. He said that secret plans he had made for the furtherance of his ambitions could not be carried out unless he had a double to appear in his stead on certain important occasions and that, as I was the only person who could pass as himself without question, like it or not I had got to return to Russia with him.

When I still refused he issued an ultimatum. He gave me three days in which to think it over and said that, if by the third day I did not come to him again prepared to do as he wished, he would give me no further chance but bring about my ruin.

On that we parted and I returned to Farnborough. As can be imagined, I was greatly worried. It did not occur to me that, living in hiding as he was, he was capable of upsetting the well-ordered life I was leading, but I did fear that he would use the occult link between us to badger me and make me miserable. To my surprise the contrary proved the case and for a whole week I remained free from those mental invasions of my consciousness by him with which I had been afflicted from the beginning of the month.

This lulled me into a false sense of security. I began to believe that his threats had been only idle ones, and that he had resigned himself to my refusal to go to Russia with him. I was to learn differently.

I belonged to a group of scientists who met once a month for an informal dinner - for which, as a number of us came up from the country, we did not change - at the Connaught Rooms. A distinguished guest always addressed us on some subject of interest and there was a debate afterwards. Sometimes the debates were of such interest that a number of us congregated in the downstairs bar after the meeting had broken up to continue the discussion. If I joined the party in the bar, lingering there made it too late for me to catch the last train back to Farnborough; so I had formed the habit of taking up an overnight bag with me as I had found that I could always get a room at one or other of the small Bloomsbury hotels if need be. Governed, therefore, by my degree of interest in the subject discussed, and how I chanced to be feeling, I either stayed the night in town or got home soon after midnight.

It so happened that a week after my meeting with Lothar, I attended one of these dinners, and stayed on afterwards talking to some of my friends. When I went to the cloakroom to get my night-bag the attendant declared that I had already collected it. In vain I produced my ticket and vowed that I had not. The attendant protested that I had said I had mislaid my ticket, and that on my giving my name, which was on a label attached to the bag, and signing a slip, the bag had been handed to me. She also produced another attendant to confirm that I was the gentleman to whom the hag had been given.

Supposing that a professional thief had impersonated me, I registered a complaint and, as it was by then too late to catch the last train, after trying several hotels that were full I secured a room at one in which I had stayed only once before, and slept in my underclothes.

Next morning, as was my custom on such occasions, on arriving back in Farnborough I went straight from the station to my office. At the midday break I went home for lunch. As I greeted Dinah I expected her to ask me how I had enjoyed my dinner in London. Instead, looking more radiant than I had seen her for a long time, she threw her arms round my neck and cried:

'Darling, you ought to go to those dinners of yours more often if you always come home after them. I don't think we've had such a wonderful night since our honeymoon.'

As she was holding me to her I was able to conceal my astonishment. Then, over her shoulder, I distinctly saw Lothar's face, and it was sneering at me. Instantly the explanation of what Dinah had said became clear. Lothar had impersonated me and slept with her the previous night.

My distress and fury can be imagined; but realizing the shattering effect the truth would have on her, I felt that I must prevent her from getting the least suspicion that anything was wrong. Controlling my emotions with an effort, I told her how much I loved her and what a joy she was to me. Later, I found my night-bag in a cupboard in the hall. That was concrete evidence that Dinah had not dreamt my return, and I had no doubt that Lothar had gone to some trouble to collect it, so that he might use it as a sort of sign-manual that he really had been there and taken my place as Dinah's husband in our bed.

One would have thought such an act, causing me the sick misery that it did, would have been enough to satisfy his resentment at my refusal to fall in with his plans; but it was not.

Three weeks elapsed, during which I gradually became less troubled by thoughts of him and the criminal deception he had practised on Dinah; then one morning I received a solicitor's letter. It informed me that I was to be cited as co-respondent in an action for divorce.

Knowing myself to be guiltless, I went up to London and demanded from the solicitors an explanation of the unjustified charge that had been brought against me. They gave it to me, chapter and verse.

Soon after six o'clock in the evening of the day that I had attended the dinner, a Mr. Wilberforce had caught me in flagrante delicto with his wife in the bedroom of their flat in Bayswater. He had forced me to give him my name and address, and a woman who cleaned for them was prepared to give evidence that, not only had she let me into the flat that evening, but had also done so on two previous occasions. The fact, as I learned later, that Mrs. Wilberforce was a woman of dubious reputation, who frequented night-clubs, made no difference to the legal aspect of the matter. As I had arrived in London that evening at five o'clock and spent the best part of the next two hours watching a film that I had particularly wanted to see, I could produce no alibi.

The only possible explanation was that Lothar, having read my mind and knowing my intentions, had impersonated me with this woman before going down to Farnborough, as a means of being further revenged upon me.

Hardly able to contain myself for fury, I jumped into a taxi and drove straight to Lothar's rooms. This time the front door was shut. My ring was answered by a blowsy woman who gave me a surly nod and said:

'Hello Mr. Vintrex, I'd begun to think you wasn't coming for that envelope you left with me. Hang on half-a-mo', and I'll go and get it for you.'

It was obvious that she took me for Lothar, so I let her continue to think so, and she slouched off down into the basement. The moment she had disappeared I tried the door of the room in which I had seen him. It opened at my touch and I walked in on the off chance that I might find something there which would give me a clue to his whereabouts.

A young man with long hair was seated there tapping away at a typewriter. I asked quickly if he happened to know the address of the previous tenant and how long it was since he had left. With a shrug, he replied, 'No, I don't even know his name. But I've been here a fortnight.'

I thanked him and backed out just in time to meet the landlady as she reappeared up the basement stairs. She handed me an envelope and with a murmur of thanks I left the house.

It had jumped to my mind that Lothar had left some paper with the woman because he thought it too dangerous to carry about with him, so he was still in this country and, with luck, it might be something which would enable me to trace him; or, rather, enable the police to do so, as, by then, I had made up my mind to put them on to him as an enemy agent.

With trembling fingers I opened the envelope. It contained only a single sheet of paper with the following words printed on it in capitals - 'Congratulations on Dinah. She must love you a lot, and I'm sorry I won't be in England when you have your next night out. I wonder how she will take it when you have to tell her about the Wilberforce woman?'

My feelings can be imagined as the full implications of the swinish double trick he had played me sank in. And as he had evidently left the country it was useless to go to the police.

Desperately I wondered what to do. At first I felt inclined to tell the truth, both to Dinah and to a solicitor as my defence in the divorce case now pending against me. But since Lothar could no longer be laid by the heels and brought into court as evidence of my innocence, I knew that I should never be believed. I had told Dinah about Lothar, and his being my identical twin, during our engagement, but I don't think his name had been even mentioned between us since. If only I'd told her about my seeing him in London, or gone to the police then, I would have had some sort of case, but to state now that my twin brother had turned up out of the past and impersonated me would sound laughably thin.

One thing I could do was to subpoena the woman with whom Lothar had lodged because, obviously, I could not have been living in her house and at Farnborough at the same time; and that, in due course, I did, but it did not save the situation.

For some days I said nothing to Dinah, but I became so ill from worry that I decided the only way to escape a nervous breakdown was to come clean with her. Of course, I did not tell her that Lothar had slept with her that night I was in London, or that he was a Russian agent, as the first would have inflicted grievous pain on her unnecessarily and the second, if it now got out - my not having reported that at the time - might have cost me my job to no good purpose. I told her only that I had seen Lothar in London and that he had used my name when caught with the Wilberforce woman.

Dinah behaved very well; but it was obvious that she did not believe my story. She took a night to think things over, then told me that our future must depend on what transpired when the case was heard. If I could prove my innocence she would most humbly beg my pardon for having doubted me. If I'd suffered a temporary aberration and it was a single slip, she would forgive me. But if it emerged that I had been having a regular affair with this woman, she would have to think again. In the meantime she meant to go back and live with her parents.

As the case could not be heard until the autumn session, I spent a miserable summer. At last it came on and in court I saw Mrs. Wilberforce for the first time. She was a Spanish type black-haired and good looking, and had plenty of sex appeal. I suppose I should have expected it, but to my horror she greeted me as an old friend, and said, with a reproachful smile:

'I do think, Otto, you've behaved awfully badly in not writing or coming to see me all this time. What's done's done, and it couldn't have made matters any the worse for you'

All I could do was to make no reply and give her a stony stare.

The case did not take long, as my only witness, the lodging-house woman, let me down completely. My solicitor had told me that she had proved extremely awkward and refused to sign a statement; and now in court she declared on oath that she had never before set eyes on me.

Her reason was not far to seek. She must have been in the pay of the Russians to take lodgers that they sent her, ask no questions and keep her mouth shut. Evidently she believed me to be a Soviet agent and, for her own safety, had determined to deny all knowledge of me, so that should I later be arrested she would escape being involved in the case.

The verdict, of course, went against me; but after that I thought my fortunes were changing for the better. The cross-examination of the Wilberforces' cleaning woman had disclosed that her mistress frequently entertained men alone in the flat when her husband was absent; so the damages awarded to Wilberforce were much less than I had feared I should have to pay and, as this also revealed her as unlikely to be the kind of woman I would have had a regular affair with, I had good hopes that Dinah would return to me.

Alas, I had underestimated Lothar's vindictiveness. With diabolical cunning he had left a hidden landmine to make more certain the wrecking of my marriage. Like so much else about us, our writing was so similar that he had never had any difficulty in forging mine, and he had made most skilful use of a letter purporting to have been written by me to Mrs. Wilberforce.

In it he referred with filthy delight to certain obscenities in which they had indulged on his previous visits to her, and said how greatly he was looking forward to another session of the same kind when he came to see her at six o'clock on the evening of my dinner in London. But instead of sending it to her he had sent it to her husband with an anonymous note to the effect that the writer had found it in a handbag that she had left behind in a night-club. It was this which had led Wilberforce to turn up at their flat unexpectedly at the hour given, as Lothar had evidently planned he should, and so catch them in bed together.

Fortunately for my reputation, as the case against me appeared such a clear one the contents of the letter had not been disclosed in court but only mentioned as the reason for Wilberforce having surprised his wife. But the solicitors who were holding a watching brief for Dinah requested a sight of it afterwards, and their report to her proved my final undoing. She started divorce proceedings against me and early in 1951 was granted her decree nisi.

I have not seen Lothar in the flesh, or heard anything of him, since our one meeting in May 1950. But I feel certain that he is now in England, and have the impression that he is living somewhere near the East Coast. Anyway, he is endeavouring to condition my mind to a state in which I would be prepared to meet him again. Should he succeed, it is quite possible that this time I shall murder him. It is in case I should do so that I have set all this down; as it may be regarded as some justification for my act, and stand me in better stead than would the same account if extracted from me, piece by piece, under police examination after the crime had been committed.

Apart from the poignant tragedy unfolded in it, this second instalment gave Verney considerable concern. From it there could be no doubt that Lothar had completely gone over to the Russians. Therefore, if he was now in England and endeavouring to get hold of his brother, the odds were all against his wanting to do so only for personal reasons; it was much more likely that he hoped to induce him to give away information connected with his secret work and was, in fact, a Soviet agent.

That being so, no effort must be spared to secure his arrest. But with the information so far to hand, there was no more chance of finding him than a needle in a haystack. Owing to Otto's justifiable hatred of Lothar, it seemed unlikely that he would be persuaded to agree to a meeting but, if he did, Lothar would have to disclose his whereabouts to him, and then would come a chance to pounce. Perhaps at that point Otto might be persuaded to co-operate; but, in asking him to do so, Verney saw a snag. If Lothar was overlooking him he might learn of his brother's intention to betray him and so avoid the trap.

After some thought C.B. decided to await developments for a while, but to take the precaution of sending Forsby two extra assistants with instructions that, should Otto leave the station, they were to tail him and, if he met his twin, arrest both brothers.

For another three-quarters of an hour the Colonel rapidly read through an assortment of documents, then his buzzer went and his secretary said over the inter-com: 'Mr. Sullivan is here and would like to see you. He says it is rather important.'

'Send him in,' replied Verney, and a moment later he was greeting Barney. 'Hello, young feller! Been in the wars?'

Barney's eye was getting back to normal, but the flesh round it still showed discolouration. 'No, Sir,' he grinned. 'Just a tiff with a stout fellow who didn't like my politics.'

'Well, what's the news? It had better be pretty good, because I've got my plate extra full this morning.'

'It is, Sir. I tried to get you Friday night, but they said you wouldn't be back till this morning. I've got the low-down on the source from which the Commies draw their secret funds to prolong unofficial strikes.'

'Have you indeed! Good work. Sit down and tell me more.'

'There are about fifty men at a small factory out at Hendon who have been on strike for some weeks without Union backing. My Red pals on the District Committee haven't made any secret of it from me that they are giving unofficial assistance to the strikers. On Friday, as I'm an out-of-work, I managed to get myself picked as one of the two body-guards against a possible hold-up to go with the official who draws the money from the bank. We drove in a car to Floyds branch in Tottenham Court Road. There were two big bags of silver, so I and my opposite number took those while the Chief Scout locked up the notes in his brief case. To my disappointment he had pushed the cheque across the counter face down, but after the cashier had paid out a clerk came along to speak to him. He was still holding the cheque in his hand, but not looking at it. Without thinking he turned it over and I succeeded in getting a squint at the side that mattered. It was drawn on the account of the Manual Workers' Benevolent Society.'

'Well done, partner. Nice work.' C.B. flicked open his case and offered the long cigarettes. 'I'll see the right chap at the Treasury and ask him to find out for us who finances this Workers' Benevolent. Under the Currency Regulations the banks are now obliged to disclose certain information when it is applied for officially.

Copies of the Benevolent's passbook sheets will give us its source of income, and that may well lead to something I'd very much like to know. Tell me now, what's the latest on Tom Ruddy's chances for Secretary-General of the C.G.T.?�

'I'd say they're jolly good. He was down here addressing a meeting of London delegates last night. Not being a delegate I wasn't entitled to attend, but I thought it important to find out the form from a ring-side seat if I possibly could, and I managed to wangle my way in on the ticket of a chap whose pocket I'd picked outside. It was pretty lively; plenty of heckling, of course, but Ruddy is used to that and, by and large, he put up a first-class performance. When the meeting was wound up, there could be no doubt that the majority of the delegates were all for him.'

'That's good to hear. If he can get himself elected I'm sure it will have a most stimulating effect on the workers who would like to oust their Communist representatives from other Trade Unions. Anything to report on your second string?'

'I don't quite get you, Sir?'

C.B. shrugged. 'Your main assignment is to get me all the dope you can on Communist secret procedure - like running this account in the name of the Workers' Benevolent. By second string, I mean following up any lead that might help us to solve Morden's murder. When you were last here you had a hunch that his sudden interest in Theosophy would be worth investigating.'

'Sure, and I did, Colonel.' The Irishism came out quite spontaneously, as Barney ran a hand through his short dark curls. 'And I've made a start on it. I couldn't go to old Mother Wardeel's last night, because of Ruddy's meeting. But I went the week before. She is running what I'd guess to be quite a profitable racket with no harm to it. No doubt most of the stuff she puts on is faked, but it provides something to natter about for a bunch of mostly worthy types who have more time and money than sense. I made two contacts that may prove worth cultivating, though: a Babu and a very attractive young woman.'

An image of Mary immediately sprang to C.B.'s mind. As a lead to checking up if it were she that Barney had encountered, he raised a prawn-like eyebrow and remarked: 'I shouldn't have thought that sort of thing held much appeal for young people; she must have been quite an exception.'

'Not as regards age. Of the twenty-odd women there, four or five were under thirty; and one was a tall blonde who might quite well have been a film starlet.'

This coincidence made Verney think it probable that Mary had balked at taking his tip to dye her beautiful golden hair, so was the blonde Barney had referred to; but, seeking to confirm this impression, he asked, 'What type is this young woman in whom you are interesting yourself?'

'She is a brunette. Brown as a Mediterranean mermaid, shoulder length hair that curls at the ends, eyebrows with a slightly satanic tilt, and a mouth as red as a pomegranate. She is a Mrs. Mauriac, and the widow of a Frenchman who was a Customs Officer.'

The description differed so greatly from C.B.'s memory of Mary Morden that he decided that, if she had carried out her intention of going to Mrs. Wardeel's, she must be the film-starlet. Meanwhile Barney was going on, 'She certainly is a poppet. That is, to look at. But she's one of the most puzzling pieces one could come across in a long day's march.'

'In what way?�

'Well, she talks in a most sophisticated manner about the sort of games one would expect Satanists to get up to, yet acts as if she were sweet seventeen and had never been kissed.'

'It seems that she is very forthcoming to strangers; or else you must be quite a psychologist to have found all this out about her in one meeting at which a lot of other people were present.'

Barney grinned. 'Oh no. Twice since I have taken her out to dinner.'

'I see. And is it your intention to charge these outings up on your expense account?'

'Certainly, Sir.' Barney's voice was firm. 'And since she knows me as Lord Larne I had to do her jolly well. Besides, all work and no play, you know. But, joking apart, it really was for the good of the cause.'

'Seeing how infernally tight the Government keeps us for money, you'll have to justify that.'

'I learned that she had been to a place that I believe to be a Satanic temple.'

C.B. smiled. 'If it is, and you can take me to it, I'll certainly have that chalked up to you as the price of one dinner.'

'I can't. I don't know where it is. Neither does she.'

'Was she doped before being taken there?�

'No; blindfolded. And I may be barking up the wrong tree.

Over dinner on Sunday night she was getting quite chatty about it. She described the interior of the place, a Brotherhood of masked, near-nude men and women, and various wonders performed by a priest dressed up like the Devil whom they call the Great Ram. Then she suddenly closed up like a clam; told me she had been pulling my leg and that really the place was only a joint where they practise Yoga.'

'Do you know who took her there?'

'Yes, Sir. That's just the point. It was one of Mrs. Wardeel's regular supporters: an Indian named Ratnadatta. He is the other bird I am interested in, because he's too intelligent to waste his evenings stooging around with that sort of crowd unless he has some ulterior motive.'

'You think he might be a sort of talent scout, keeping an eye out for likely suckers who could be made use of, one way or another, by some Black fraternity?'

'That's it, Sir. I heard him disparaging Mrs. Wardeel's outfit to Mrs. Mauriac as no better than a children's circus, and saying that, if she was really interested in the occult, he could show her some real grown-up stuff. That was a week ago last Tuesday, and on Saturday night she went to this place with him.'

'And what do you deduce from all this?�

'Well, Teddy Morden became a regular attendant at Mrs. Wardeel's parties, didn't he? Perhaps this Indian gent introduced him, too, into this sixth-form set-up. Maybe the whole thing is a mare's nest, and Mrs. Mauriac really was pulling my leg about it being a Black Magic circle. But if she wasn't, I think it's on the cards that it was there that Morden got up against trouble.'

'That's fair enough. All right. I'll O.K. both your dinners. What is your next move to be?�

Barney grinned. 'I'm going after Mr. Ratnadatta. I'm certain he's up to no good; and I mean to have the pants off him before he is much older.'

CHAPTER X ORDEAL OF A NEOPHYTE

On Saturday Mary could settle to nothing. She had no engagements during the day, so after tidying her flat and doing her week-end shopping she had nothing to occupy her. In turn she tried the radio and reading a thriller, and abandoning both went out to see a film; but even that failed to hold her interest for more than a few minutes at a time. She simply could not keep her mind from speculating on what might happen to her that evening.

She endeavoured to fortify herself by remembering that Ratnadatta had been quite definite in his assurances that she would not be required to offer herself in service to the Temple until her initiation, and that before that there was a second stage to be gone through in which some token act of work in the interests of the Brotherhood had to be performed.

But how much reliance could she place on his word? She would have to trust herself to him again in that old mansion hidden in a slum, which was now the secret meeting place of depraved men and women. For the ceremony it was certain that she would have to go down into the temple among them. She would, almost certainly, be expected first to undress and don their uniform of only a mask, silver sandals and a transparent muslin cloak. She had no illusions about the emotions that the sight of herself aroused in men, often even quite respectable ones, when they saw her in a swim-suit on a bathing beach. What if some of the Brotherhood followed their own dictum, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole of the Law' and set upon her? Even if Ratnadatta had the will to protect her, would he be able to do so? And why should they refrain from demanding of a neophyte what they might expect to be given willingly by an initiate?

Yet in the end, soon after nine o'clock, she found herself in a bus on the way to Sloane Square; for, late in the afternoon, several thoughts had come to her to allay her fears. Depraved as the members of the Brotherhood might be individually, they were under the orders of their High Priest Abaddon, and from his benevolent looks she believed he would protect her; they clearly set great value on the proper observance of their ceremonies, so were unlikely to depart from a set ritual; and surely Ratnadatta would not have spent so much time indoctrinating her unless his object was to make her a permanent disciple of the Devil, whereas that would be defeated if she were so treated that night that she refused ever again to go to a meeting. Moreover, once a neophyte, the probability was that she would be permitted to talk to other members of the Brotherhood, and that would give her a chance to pursue her original intention of trying to find out if the Satanists had been responsible for Teddy's terrible end.

At the Tube Station Ratnadatta was waiting for her. As he had directed, she had no obvious make-up on and had had her hair scragged back tightly into a bun; so, although she had tied a silk scarf round her head, she felt quite a sight. But his comment was one of approval.

They got into a taxi and again she allowed him to tie a handkerchief over her eyes. The drive seemed much shorter than when he had taken her to the Temple the previous Saturday and during it he said little, except to reaffirm that the ceremony would be quite a brief one and add that, as it was to be the first item on the evening's programme, he hoped to be able to drop her at Hyde Park Corner well before eleven o'clock. Again she wondered, with a nasty sinking feeling inside her, if he was telling the truth; but it was too late to back out now.

The taxi set them down in a different place from that at which they had got out before, but after a few minutes' walk through streets that stank from the garbage that littered their gutters, they again turned into the cul-de-sac at the end of which lay the old mansion.

As soon as they were inside, the Indian led her across the fine hall to a room on the ground floor. Its walls were lined with books, some of which were handsomely bound and others that looked as if they were very old. It was heavily carpeted and richly furnished, so had the appearance of a wealthy man's study, but some filing cabinets and a dictaphone and typewriter on a side table suggested that it was also used as a business office. Behind a heavily carved desk, which was bare except for a bronze copied from that retrieved from Pompeii and now in the secret museum at Naples, which depicts a satyr raping a goat, sat Abaddon.

The High Priest was wearing a dark lounge suit, and Mary thought that he looked more than ever like a Bishop. He stood up as she came in, came forward to meet her with a charming smile, took her by the hand, led her to a chair, and said:

'Welcome, my child.' Then, with a glance at Ratnadatta, 'Our Brother Sasin, here, has told me a lot about you. He believes that you are one of those who are old in time, and that your feet are truly set upon the right Path; so that you are worthy of advancement and to be granted, in due course, powers which will enable you to be of value in the service of Our Lord Satan. But first, I must examine you myself; for my consent to our acceptance of you as a neophyte is dependant on my confirming Sasin's opinion.'

For some five minutes he put to her a number of questions which she answered in a low voice, replying to them all in the way she thought he would wish, on the basis of the instruction Ratnadatta had given her during their numerous talks.

Abaddon's eyes were large, pale blue and steady. Once or twice, when she found a lie difficult to tell convincingly, she had a subconscious urge to look away from them, but found she was unable to. Under that intent gaze she almost panicked, feeling certain that he must detect the fact that she was not telling the truth about her convictions. But at last the catechism ended, and he appeared satisfied. Turning to Ratnadatta, he said:

'My reading of our young friend is that she is troubled by certain fears and still has lingering doubts. But both are not unusual in applicants of her age. The unknown is always more frightening to the young, and she has not yet had long enough to free herself entirely from ideas acquired during a conventional upbringing. Yet neither of these encumbrances to a happy state of mind are, in her case, so considerable that they will not soon be dissipated now that she has come among us. Our High Priestess will not be with us tonight, but any Sister of the Ram is qualified to prepare her. Go, Sasin, and bring here two of our Sisters from among the early arrivals.'

As Ratnadatta left the room, Abaddon took from a drawer in his desk a black satin mask, gave it to her and said, 'Take off your scarf and put that on. The identities of all the Brothers and Sisters of a Lodge are known to its High Priest and High Priestess; but it is not required that they should disclose them to one another. Some do so in order that they may develop outside in their everyday lives, friendships they have made here; others prefer to keep their identities secret. For that reason, from beginning to end of all our meetings everyone except myself and our High Priestess remains masked.'

When she had adjusted the mask, he went on: 'For the same reason no one is ever addressed while here by the name by which they are known outside. The ceremony of initiation includes baptism into the initiate's new faith. Each receives a Satanic name by which he is in future known among the Brotherhood. It must be a name associated with the service of Our Lord Satan. The names of His great nobility - the Seraphim who surround His throne and receive their orders direct from Him - such as Asmodeus, Uriel, Zabulon, Nebros, and so on, may not be taken by initiates. Like my own, Abaddon, they are reserved as titles for the High Priests of the different Lodges. But you may choose your own from those of all the witches and wizards who have actually lived in the past in this country or any other; and, since all of us in our past incarnations have many times inhabited both male and female bodies, a man may choose a witch's name or a woman a warlock's, should they so desire.'

Having said what he had to say, he fell silent and seemed quite content to sit, his long, beautiful hands folded on the desk in front of him, regarding Mary with a faint smile. But she found the continued silence and this unwavering gaze vaguely disquieting; so she searched her mind for some remark to break it and, after a moment, said:

'Circe was a famous witch, wasn't she. It's a pretty name and I think I'd like to be called after her.'

'By all means, my dear.' His smile deepened and he slightly inclined his high domed head. 'The name of the Greek enchantress will go well with your dark beauty. But think the matter over. There will be ample time to do so before your initiation, and by then you may have decided that you prefer some other.'

At that moment Ratnadatta re-entered the room. He now had on a mask and with him were two masked women. Both were wearing the sort of clothes in which they might have gone shopping in Bond Street or to a smart luncheon party.

The elder had grey hair and was small, but carried her well-preserved little figure very upright and had an air of great self-confidence. Her clothes were good but vaguely shabby, as though she did not bother with such matters overmuch. She was wearing a rope of good-sized pearls, a wedding ring, and a diamond half-hoop that did not appear to be of any great value.

The other was the Chinese girl. One glance was enough to tell Mary that her suit must have cost all of sixty guineas, her little hat near twenty and her hand-made shoes again as much. She had a diamond and platinum clip in the lapel of her coat, of the kind that could have come only from a jeweller of the first rank. She wore no wedding ring, but on her left hand there blazed one of the largest diamond solitaires that Mary had ever seen.

Standing up, Abaddon bowed to them, said, 'Greetings my children', then gestured with his right hand towards Mary. 'Here is one who aspires to join us in serving Our Lord Satan, and who I have good hopes will prove herself fitted to become our Sister. For the time being we shall refer to her as Circe.'

With a glance at Mary, he waved his left hand towards the two women. 'The Countess of Salisbury, and Tung-fang Shuo, honoured Sisters of the Ram.' Then, to them, he added, 'In cell number ten you will find all things ready for apparelling Circe suitably for her first ceremony. Be pleased to escort her to it and do all that is necessary.'

Both women gave Mary an appraising look. Very conscious that her clothes were 'off the peg', her face un-made-up and her hair done most unbecomingly, Mary wilted under their glance. But, next moment, she saw that beneath their masks the mouths of both of them were smiling, and the older one said briskly, 'Don't look so worried, child. There is nothing to be frightened about. Come with us, now.'

Somewhat reassured, Mary gave a half-smile to Abaddon and Ratnadatta, then accompanied the two women from the room. As they walked, one on either side of her, up the broad staircase, the elderly Countess remarked: 'Perhaps Abaddon's mentioning a cell scared you. But it need not. In Victorian times this house was a nunnery and the big reception rooms on the first floor were converted into a number of small cells. They come in quite useful now as they provide us with a range of private changing rooms.'

Half way down a broad corridor they entered one of them. It no longer had any resemblance to a cell. A fitted carpet covered its floor; on its panelled walls hung several small, but beautifully executed, coloured erotic French prints of the eighteenth century. It was furnished with a wardrobe, dressing table, electric fire, and chairs, on one of which reposed a strange collection of items consisting mainly of iron and sacking.

'Get your clothes off, my dear,' said the Countess, and Mary began to obey. As she did so, impelled to show that she was not completely overawed, she said: 'Abaddon told me that everyone here goes by the name of a witch or wizard, so why do you continue to use your own name, Lady Salisbury?'

The little grey-haired woman gave a sharp laugh. 'Outside these walls I have no title, but if you had read the old historical chronicles you would know that the Countess of Salisbury, who lived in Edward the Third's time, was the Queen witch of England. She was the King's mistress and it was from her that he snatched the emblem of Satan's power, her jewelled garter. Far memory tells me that I lived her life in a previous incarnation; so I took her title.'

'And you?' Realizing now that she must not neglect the opportunity to get these women to talk, Mary looked at the Chinese girl. 'I'm afraid I did not catch your name, but I'd be interested to know about its associations.'

The girl smiled. 'I am Tung-fang Shuo, and take my name from the great Chinese magician who lived in the second century a.d. But tell us, what impels you to wish to become a Sister of the Ram?'

'A desire for power,' replied Mary promptly. 'What kind of power?' enquired the Countess. After hesitating a second, Mary answered, 'Power over men.'

A beak-like nose projected from the Countess's mask and she wrinkled it in a suggestion of contempt. 'Then I think you stupid. You have looks enough already to get most men you might want. Power can have more interesting uses. Fifteen years ago my husband was no more than a fairly rich industrialist with no worthwhile social connections. Now, if I unmasked I should be surprised if you did not recognize me. Hardly a week passes without my photograph appearing in the Tatler, or some other paper. I am one of the best-known hostesses in London; and that brings far more satisfaction than just being able to lure any man you want into bed with you.'

'I do not agree,' declared Tung-fang Shuo. 'Your life of constantly entertaining important people must be one long round of anxiety and trouble. Regard myself. Three years ago I was brought to London as a typist to work in the Chinese Embassy. Behold me now. I toil not, neither do I spin. I am the mistress of a millionaire. He must kiss my feet before I will allow him to make love to me, and if I were fool enough I could make him squander his whole fortune on my whims.' Suddenly she raised her hand, flashing the huge diamond on her finger. 'But I am wise enough to be content with such presents as he of his own will buys me.'

By that time Mary had taken off all her clothes. The Countess picked up the sacking from the chair and held it out to her. To her amazement she saw that it had been fashioned into a rough two-piece garment. The upper part was simply a sack with holes cut in it at one end through which head and arms could be passed; the lower, another sack, slit down one side and along its bottom, so that by a string threaded through its top it could be tied round the waist as a skirt.

Tung-fang Shuo's black almond eyes smiled at Mary through the mask she was wearing. 'I am sad for you at this moment. You are very beautiful, and it is a hard thing for a beautiful woman to have to put on clothes that lessen the desire of men for her. But you are still a Christian; so you must wear a Christian's livery.'

Obediently Mary wriggled into the coarse, scratchy sacking, while Tung-fang Shuo pulled out from under the chair a pair of shoes so ugly, and made of such thick leather, that they resembled men's football boots from which the top few inches had been cut off. Mary sat down and the Chinese girl helped her get her bare feet into these monstrosities. They were much too large for her, but strong adjustable clips kept them on. As she stood up again and took a step forward she nearly overbalanced, the foot she had raised came down with a thud, and she realized that the soles of these horrible shoes must be weighted with lead.

The Countess, meanwhile, had been sorting out the ironmongery and Mary could see now that it consisted of a rusty set of ancient gyves and manacles. The two women adjusted the leg-irons then fastened the thick handcuffs, that were attached to them by short chains, over her wrists. Standing back they both surveyed her and the Countess said:

'I think a No. 2 size mantle would be about right for her.'

'Yes,' agreed Tung-fang Shuo, 'and her feet are a little larger than mine, so she will need size 5 in sandals.' Then she added to Mary: 'Sit down now and wait here until we return. We shall not be long as we have only to undress.'

When they had gone Mary looked at herself in the mirror and found her reflection even more unprepossessing than she had supposed. The shapeless sacking made her look broader and shorter than she appeared normally, and entirely hid her good figure. Her scragged back hair left her face without its attractive frame. Her complexion was still brown, as she had disobeyed Ratnadatta in that one particular, fearing that if she allowed him to see her naturally fair skin, he might suspect that she had also disguised herself in other ways; but she had on no eye-shadow or lipstick, and her mouth now stood out abnormally pale against her bronze-tinted face.

In less than ten minutes the Countess and Tung-fang Shuo rejoined her. Both now wore only transparent mantles, silver sandals and black velvet garters buckled below their left knees. The former, with her lean skinny little body, and loose hanging breasts, Mary thought a repulsive sight for this time she had been given no drugged drink to condition her mind into regarding nudity with detached indifference; yet that very fact enabled her consciously to appreciate that the slender, golden-brown form of the young Chinese was beautifully proportioned and as entrancing to look at as a great work of art.

The Countess said: 'Come now. You will find it difficult to walk in those heavy shoes, but we will help you.'

She was right. The weight of the irons was distributed, and so supportable, but the lead in the shoes made it an effort to lift them from the ground. The two women each took Mary by an arm and between them she staggered along the corridor. When they reached the staircase they made her put her arms round their necks, and so got her down the stairs without the risk of her ricking an ankle.

In the hall Ratnadatta was waiting for them. He, too, had changed into mantle and sandals, so that now his pot-belly stood out undisguised. He led the way round and under the broad staircase. Below it was a pair of big arched doors. Taking a short knob-kerrie from a hook on the wall, he banged with it loudly upon them. From the far side there came a muffled challenge.

'Who seeks entry here?'

'One who repents her past heresies and craves to be accepted into the grace off our Master, Satan; designated by the Creator Lord off this World from its beginning to its end,' cried Ratnadatta in a loud voice.

'Enter penitent, that you may abase yourself before the only true God,' replied the voice, and the doors swung silently open.

Ratnadatta stood aside and motioned to Mary to go forward. The two women let go her arms and Tung-fang Shuo said in a quick whisper, 'Slide your feet. You'll find that easier. It will not take long.'

Mustering her courage, Mary crossed the threshold into the Temple. It was arranged as she had first seen it, with the divans forming short rows on either side of the aisle. The congregation was sitting or lounging upon them but now, instead of their masked faces being turned towards the altar, the twenty-odd pairs of eyes behind the masks were rivetted upon herself.

Through the grille up in the balcony her field of vision had been limited, but she saw now that the sides of the temple were supported by rows of pillars from which rose gothic arches, giving it much more the appearance of a small church than, as she had thought it, a banqueting hall. Then recalling that the Countess had told her that it had once been a convent, she concluded that from a banqueting hall the nuns must have converted it into their chapel. If so, the altar she was approaching must have once been consecrated. The thought that in a few more minutes she would be called on to approve its desecration added to her terror.

The awful effort of moving her lead-weighted feet made her pant for breath and break out in perspiration. But slowly she shuffled forward while, but for the slithering of the shoe soles on the polished floorboards, an utter silence reigned and the many eyes continued to stare at her.

At last she reached the steps in front of the altar. Abaddon was standing behind it, robed as before in heavy black satin. He beckoned her up the steps, then signed to her to kneel down on the top one. When she did so her head came just above the level of the altar top, and as she looked up at him he said in his melodious voice:

'Penitent, the opportunity is offered you to redeem your past. Do you desire to take it?'

'Yes,' she murmured.

'Are you prepared to serve Our Lord Satan with your whole mind, body and soul, permitting nothing to deter you from the furtherance of his work?�

'Yes,' she repeated.

'Do you freely undertake to accept without question all orders that may be given to you by those He has placed, or may place, in authority over you?'

'Yes,' she murmured again.

From somewhere behind him he produced a cross about eighteen inches long and made from two thin strips of black wood held together by a single nail. Leaning forward he put it into her hands, and said:

'As proof that you have purged your mind of all false teaching you will now break this and throw the pieces from you, while declaring, "I deny Jesus Christ, the deceiver; and abjure the Christian Faith, holding in contempt all its works.'

A lump formed in Mary's throat. The thought of performing the awful act required of her filled her with terror. If she uttered such an appalling blasphemy surely the wrath of Heaven would fall upon her? All the beliefs she had held when younger surged up into her mind. She had accepted without a shadow of doubt the accounts given her by the nuns at her convent of people who mocked God having been struck dead on the spot. Even if such things did not happen, there could be no escaping the Day of Judgment. The faithful and the backsliders alike would then have to account for their every act. Although she no longer practised her religion she had never ceased to believe that. How could she possibly make herself answerable for having committed such a terrible sin? The thought of it, and the price she must some day pay, would haunt her night and day for the rest of her life.

Yet, what if she refused? She had wantonly placed herself in the hands of these evil people. She was completely at their mercy. They would regard her standing firm in her true beliefs as a defiance of the dark power that they worshipped. To them, it would be like someone in a Christian church standing before the altar and proclaiming his allegiance to the Devil. Their rage at such an insult might cause them to rise up and fall upon her in a frenzy. They might even murder her.

They would, from fear that, having refused to serve Satan, if they let her go she would betray their vile secrets. Only by killing her could they be certain of saving themselves, or at least having to abandon this well-concealed meeting-place with all its costly furnishings. They would have nothing to fear from her disappearance; for she was living alone under an assumed name. Her landlady would report in a few days' time to the police that she had gone off leaving her things behind, but that would lead only to her being listed with hundreds of other missing persons. She had cut herself off even from Barney, the one and only person who might have tried to trace her.

Short of a miracle, escape was impossible and, having so long since fallen from a state of grace, how could she hope for one? Either she must pronounce the ultimate blasphemy or die there.

Desperately she sought for some middle course: some plea or trick by which she might postpone the issue. Her mind whirled with visions: of the Saviour, whom she was ordered to deny, upon the Cross; of a picture of Hell she had been shown as a child, in which naked men and women were being thrust by demons with pitchforks into the roaring flames; of a little coloured plaster statue of the Virgin before which she ha d knelt for many hundred nights when saying her prayers; of the insolently splendid figure of the Great Ram, and his terrifying black imp, as they had stood only a few feet from the spot where she was crouching, no more than a week ago.

These swiftly changing images robbed her of all coherent thought. From the moment Abaddon had spoken the abjuration her mind had been racing with such speed that each fearful idea chased out its predecessor in a flash; but even so the seconds had been ticking by, and she heard the High Priest say in a low voice:

'Come; do as I have directed. Otherwise the Brotherhood will become impatient.'

At that instant yet another mental picture flashed into Mary's brain. It was the pale serene face of the Mother Superior at the Convent she had attended. The old lady's lips and her gentle tones sounded again in Mary's ears, 'Remember, child, the understanding and the mercy of our Lord Jesus is infinite.'

It was the key. He knew that she had come here not for her own gain or advantage, with greed, lust, or a craving to be given power over others, but only in the hope of bringing her husband's murderers to book; and that if it proved possible, she would take steps to wreck this evil community that vilified His name. Nothing she said, in this gateway to Hell, no oath she took to Satan, could be binding provided that in her heart she remained true to the Redeemer.

A new strength suddenly flowed into her. She snapped the wooden cross in half and flung the pieces from her. Then in a hoarse voice she uttered the terrible words.

Abaddon smiled down upon her, and said: 'Stand up and raise your left hand.'

With a clank of the chain that attached her wrist-cuff to her leg-irons, she did so. Leaning forward again he put into her raised hand a life-sized phallus made of solid gold. It was so heavy that she nearly dropped it, but managed to clutch it to her chest.

'Hold it above your head,' he ordered, 'and repeat after me, sentence by sentence, the words I am about to say. "By the symbol of the Creator ... I swear henceforth to be ... a faithful servant of His most puissant Arch-Angel... the Prince Lucifer ... whom before departing to perform further wonders ... He designated as His Regent and Lord of this World ... As a being now possessed of a human body in this world ... I swear to give my full allegiance to its lawful Master ... To worship Him, Our Lord Satan, and no other... To despise all man-made religions ... and to bring contempt upon them whenever that may be done without courting danger ... To undermine the faith of others . . . in such false religions, wherever possible . . . and bring them to the true faith ... if after consultation with my superiors they decide that to be desirable ... I swear to obey without question... every order I may receive from my superiors ... or those who may be placed in authority over me ... I swear to give my mind, body and soul unreservedly ... to the furtherance of the designs of Our Lord Satan . . . Finally I swear that as a neophyte . . . and later should I be privileged to be initiated into the Brotherhood of the Ram ... I will in no circumstances disclose its secrets . . . the places of meeting of its Lodges . . . anything to which I have been a witness while attending their meetings ... or the identity of any person that I have met at one or more of them. Should I break this my oath ... may it be decreed that for a hundred incarnations . .. beginning with my next... I shall never rise from poverty . . . shall be rejected by all upon whom I may set my affections... and die from some agonizing disease." '

At first, as Mary repeated his words phrase by phrase, her voice was a little weak and hesitant, but after a few moments she realized that, having passed the Rubicon by denying Christ, nothing she might say mattered now; so she took the remainder of the oath in firm, clear tones.

When the worst, as she thought, was over, Abaddon said to her: 'Now lie down at full length upon the altar.'

Awkwardly, on account of her lead-weighted feet, she clambered on to it and stretched herself out.

In a loud voice Abaddon cried: 'Brothers and Sisters of the Ram. The penitent has proved worthy of acceptance as a neophyte into our High Order. It is now my happy duty to free her from the bonds of ignorance and superstition.'

With swift, well-practised movements, he knocked off Mary's fetters and unbuckled the heavy shoes, casting them quickly aside. He then gave a gentle pull at her bun and ran his hands through her hair, so that the pins fell out and her dark locks again tumbled about her shoulders. Lastly, with a sharp knife he slit up the sacking shirt and cut the string that held the sacking skirt in place. Ripping the tatters of the ugly garments away he exposed her on the altar naked except for the mask over her face.

'Stand up,' he said, 'and face the congregation so that they may look upon you.'

Mary did as she was bid. It was futile to pretend false shame. She had been prepared at least for this, and she was justly proud of her beautiful body. A murmur of interest and admiration went up from the masked men and women lounging on the divans.

Upon the two nearest, on either side of the aisle, the Countess and Tung-fang Shuo were sitting. The one had folded on her knees a transparent muslin mantle; the other was holding a pair of silver sandals. Both rose, came forward and put upon Mary this livery of the Brotherhood.

As they stepped back, the rest of the congregation suddenly came to its feet and surged forward. Fearful afresh of what might be about to happen to her, Mary stared at the advancing mob with distended eyes and backed swiftly against the altar. But Abaddon had come round it, and said to her:

'You have nothing to fear. It is our custom that the Brotherhood should give ritual welcome to every neophyte, because she is already half-way to becoming a Sister. As High Priest it is my privilege to be the first to do so.' He then put his hands on her shoulders, stooped his head, and kissed her on the lips.

He smelt faintly of lavender water and cigars, so she did not mind in the least. Neither did she when the Countess took his place and gave her a swift peck, or when Tung-fang Shuo, in turn, drew her close and gave her a long, sweetly perfumed kiss on the mouth; but as the Chinese girl released her she was stricken with fearful apprehension. The whole congregation was now thronging round, men and women, old and young; yet there was nothing she could do to evade them.

One after another they greeted her according to their temperaments. Some performed the ritual only as a necessary act, placing their hands lightly on her shoulders or waist, and barely touching her lips with theirs. But others took full advantage of the opportunity offered to them.

The very tall, fair-haired man, whom she had noticed the week before from the gallery, actually lifted her from her feet and held her to him for nearly half a minute, while kissing her until she was breathless. But after him came the huge negress, grinning from ear to ear, to envelop her in a mountain of flesh, so that she had to exercise great control to prevent herself from fighting off the repulsive creature.

Ratnadatta waited until last. As had been the case with several of the others, he took his time about it, and she felt that in accepting his embrace she reached the summit of her ordeal. Her flesh seemed to creep as he put his arms about her, and as his lips opened to kiss her she received the full strength of his sweetish, bad-lobster-smelling breath.

At last it was over. Stepping back, Ratnadatta took her hand and turned her towards the altar behind which Abaddon had again taken up his position. They bowed to him; he returned their bow, then the Indian led her back down the aisle and out through the big double doors of the temple.

Silent, and still trembling, she accompanied him up the stairs. He opened the door of the room in which she had changed and said:

'Put on your own clothes, plees. When you haf dressed come down to the hall. I shall be there waiting for you.'

As she dressed she could not make up her mind if she was glad or sorry that she had not been allowed to stay for longer down in the temple. While suffering her ordeal she had hoped that as the price of it she would be given a chance to mingle with the members of the Brotherhood, enter into conversation with some of them and, perhaps, pick up some pointer bearing on the reason for her having come there. On the other hand, had they let her remain there to take part in their feast and dance, some of the kisses she had received suggested that, although she was as yet only a neophyte, far worse might have befallen her. On balance she decided that, if she could now get away without further unwelcome attentions from Ratnadatta, she would be well out of it.

Down in the hall she found him fully dressed. Without a word he took her out into the cul-de-sac and, with a step so quick that it betrayed impatience, walked her for a quarter of a mile until they reached a waiting taxi. As soon as they were seated in it, he bandaged her eyes, then he said:

'Tonight you haf taken a great step. You behave good; very good. I haf no complaints for you. Not till initiation do you receive baptism and perform service to temple. Also then you will sign pact in your own blood, and will be granted in exchange first stage off power to influence others. But before this you must perform some act decreed as test off your willingness to serve Our Lord Satan intelligently and well.'

He wheezed a little, then went on. 'You must continue attendance at the Tuesdays off Mrs. Wardeel. She ees a stupid woman, but serves good purpose in gathering at her house peoples interested in the occult. Most are harmless fools; but sometimes there comes one like yourself, worthy off advancement and suitable for employment in the great work off Our Lord Satan. I attend always for purpose off recognizing such. It will be there, next week, the week after, I do not know; but when Abaddon tells me to, that I shall inform you off the task allotted to you.'

At Hyde Park Corner he set her down. It seemed to her that a whole night must have passed since she had met him at Sloane Square Tube Station; but to her amazement it was still before eleven. Although she could have sworn that she had been in the Temple for hours, the actual ceremony had lasted only twenty minutes.

On her way home in a bus she still felt dazed and terribly exhausted. Her mind was filled with a medley of recollections of sights, sounds and feelings that she had experienced that evening: the body of the skinny Countess, the huge glittering diamond on the finger of Tung-fang Shuo, Abaddon seated in a lounge suit at his desk, her terror on being ordered to deny Jesus Christ, the weight of those terrible lead-soled shoes, the face of the Mother Superior, the embrace of the very tall fair-haired man, her panic as the congregation crowded round her.

Fortunately the bus conductress jogged her memory at the stop she had asked for when taking her ticket. She stumbled off, walked back to her number in Cromwell Road, let herself in, and wearily dragged herself upstairs to her flat.

Going straight to the bathroom she turned on the bath, then tipped some disinfectant into a glass, added water, and taking a gulp began to rinse her mouth. Her impulse to clean it and scrub her face free from the traces left by the score, and more, of mouths that had caressed or slobbered over it brought back into her mind details of the most repulsive kisses to which she had had to submit.

Suddenly she seemed to smell again Ratnadatta's foul breath. her stomach heaved, and she was sick into the basin.

CHAPTER XI SEEN IN A CRYSTAL

Mary's reaction to the ordeal through which she had passed led to her again contemplating abandoning her self-imposed mission. Although she could not yet resume her old life at Wimbledon, there was nothing to stop her packing her things and leaving Cromwell Road without telling anyone where she was moving, and taking rooms under another name in a different part of London. Or, as she had an ample reserve of money, she could refuse further offers of work as a model and take a few weeks' holiday at the seaside.

The idea of going to Dublin for a while then occurred to her. Soon after Teddy's death she had received a letter of condolence from her young brother. He had said that he was doing quite well in an advertising agency, in which he had found an opening, and was living as a p.g. with a pleasant family. He was her only relative, and the only person she could think of who would at once open to her a new circle of acquaintances, and so solve the question of the loneliness which afflicted her. But, on second thoughts, she felt that a visit to Dublin would revive too sharply her memories of her year of misery there; so the problem of her unhappy isolation remained.

Moreover, by Monday night she was reasoning with herself that after having submitted to Saturday's ceremony it would be absurd to throw away the advantages she might gain from it. To hear the task she was to be set, as a test of her willingness to serve the Devil, should at least give her one more chance of finding out more about the Brotherhood. She might have an opportunity of cultivating her acquaintance with the Countess and Tung-fang Shuo and, if she were allowed to mingle with the rest, perhaps even manage matters so that the very tall fair-haired man, who had obviously been most strongly attracted to her, would make a date to take her out to dinner, After all, she need not carry out the test job given to her, and when the pace looked like getting too hot she could always make a bolt for it to some little seaside place or a village in the country. In consequence, she went again, as Ratnadatta had told her to, on Tuesday evening to Mrs. Wardeel's.

The lecture that night was given by a sprightly, grey-haired American woman, and was on the subject of the doctrine of Theosophy. She started off by enunciating the heart of the creed -that everyone reaches perfection in the end, but must first pass through many incarnations, during which they are subject to the law of 'Karma', and so can increase or decrease the number of lives they must spend on earth in accordance with the efforts they make, or lack of them, to purge themselves from selfishness and all evil tendencies. She then proceeded to describe the Occult Hierarchy.

It consisted, she said, of those who had achieved perfection and it was they who ordered all matters for everyone still passing through lives on earth. Supreme among them was a Trinity formed by the King of this World, the Lord Buddha, and the Mahachohan. The first two represented the Head and Heart of our universe, and the last was like a divine Arm that stretched down to control the practical side of things in this world.

The King and the Buddha each made their influence felt through two representatives, the Manu and the Bodhisattva, the latter being the Protector of all religions. This last office was at present held by The Lord Maitreya, and it was his spirit that had animated the body of Jesus Christ.

Under these Supreme Powers were ranged in order the other members of the Hierarchy, some of whom take pupils, so are known as Masters. Those who particularly concerned themselves with the Theosophical movement were the Master Morya, the Master Koot Hoomi, who were usually referred to as the Master M. and the Master K.H., and the Master the Count, whose special business it was to supervise ceremonial.

It should be the object of all Theosophists to strive to fit themselves to be taken as a pupil by one of these Masters. The two first could be approached only on the astral plane, while in a state of trance, or during what we know as dreams. They were said to live on opposite sides of a narrow gorge at Shigatse in Tibet. But the Master the Count possessed a physical body and was believed to have a castle in Hungary.

The lecturer then went on to speak of the founder of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, and those who had succeeded her as enlightened leaders of the Society - Mrs. Annie Besant, C. W. Leadbeater, George Arundale, Cruppumullage Jinarajadasa, James Wedgwood, and several others. All these, she said, had passed several of the Five Initiations, all of which must be passed before a person became liberated from the law of 'Karma'. Madame Blavatsky had achieved this supreme goal and so been permitted to stay for a time with the Master M. in Tibet; while Mrs. Besant and C. W, Leadbeater had both passed the Fourth Initiation, and the latter was said actually to have met the Master the Count in the flesh, when strolling along the Corso in Rome.

She then spoke of the Orders of the Rosy Cross and of the Star in the East, and of the unhappy schisms in the Society which had in turn led to the formal dissolution of both; deplored the differences of opinion between Krishnamurti - who during his boyhood and youth had been accepted by Theosophists as the new great Bringer of Light to the world - and Arundale and Leadbeater, which had saddened Mrs. Besant's last years; and, finally, urged them to refrain from such disputes, which could only bring discredit upon the movement and check the progress along the Upward Path of those who participated in them.

It was not until the lecture had finished that Mary, on glancing round, realized that Barney must have belatedly slipped in; for there he was, sitting in the back row near the door. Her heart began to beat as he caught her glance, but he gave her only a nod and a suggestion of a smile. Then, when the chairs were moved into a circle, instead of coming over to her, he remained helping with them at the far end of the room.

For the second part of that evening's session, Mrs. Wardeel had provided a clairvoyant. She was a fat, blowsy looking woman with dreamy eyes, but not so dreamy by nature as to lack a sense of business. Having taken her seat at a small table with a crystal on it, and another chair on its far side, she announced in a deep voice, 'I'll be pleased to see what I can for those who wish, but owing to numbers I can give each of you only a short session. Just enough to answer, if things prove favourable, one or two questions. But, if any of you would like a private consultation about intimate matters, Mrs. Wardeel will give you my telephone number. My fee for a hour's looking is two guineas.'

All the lights were put out except that of a standard lamp which had been brought in and placed near the table; then she went to work.

Those members of the audience who had questions to ask sat in turn in the chair opposite her and she gave each of them a few minutes. Most of the enquiries were about relatives abroad, the recovery of children or friends from illness or mishaps, journeys it was proposed to take, and law-suits or money matters, but at times her consultants asked only if anything was likely to happen to them soon which would have an important effect on their future.

After a dozen or more people had had their turn, Barney went to the table and put that sort of question to her. The clairvoyant gave him a shrewd look, concentrated on her crystal for a little, then replied, 'I see a fair young lady. Soon now you're going to fall in love with her, but I'm afraid she's going to lead you a fine dance!'

'Have I met her yet? And do I marry her?' Barney enquired.

'Come and see me privately,' replied the sibyl, promptly, 'and I'll tell you more. Next please!'

Mary at once stood up, took his place and asked the same question.

After gazing fixedly down into her crystal for about half a minute, the woman sat back, gave her an uneasy look, and said: 'You're heading for trouble. I'd watch my step, if I were you.'

'What sort of trouble?' enquired Mary.

'You know,' replied the woman darkly. 'Wouldn't do to speak of it here. And if you take a drive into the country with a fair man, you'll have cause to regret it. Next please!'

For a moment Mary had been both startled and frightened; for she had jumped to the conclusion that the clairvoyant's warning must refer to her association with the Brotherhood. But the mention of 'a fair man' set her at ease again, convincing her that the woman was only baiting her hook with the most likely lure to induce a potential customer to spend two guineas on a private consultation.

Twenty minutes later the session was over and they all trooped across the hall for the usual refreshments. Ratnadatta paused by Mary to smile a greeting and say to her in a low voice, 'I haf no news for you yet. Next week perhaps. Do not fail to attend here every week; otherwise when time comes I haf the bother to make contact with you where you live.'

He then quickly left her to get hold of the woman wearing valuable jewels, to whom he had spent most of his time talking during the after-session reception the previous week.

As Mary had, two days before, contemplated leaving London, his last words aroused a vague fear in her. They might have simply referred to her flat, the address of which he already had: but they might equally well have implied that wherever she went he had the means of finding her. In any case, they clearly indicated that she was no longer free to sever at will her connection with the Brotherhood, and that if she tried to she must expect him to seek her out and, perhaps, inflict some form of punishment on her.

Thrusting that unnerving thought out of her mind, she looked quickly round for Barney. He was near the end of the buffer furthest from her, and engaged in conversation with a small earnest woman who, from an experience of her own, she knew, once started, babbled on like a brook. That he would have liked to break away was evident from the fact that he kept throwing sideways glances at other people, particularly at Ratnadatta, who was only a few feet distant from him.

Mary had accepted a sausage roll from a man who was a regular attendant at Mrs. Wardeel's meetings, and after exchanging a few words with her he moved off with the dish; so she decided that as soon as she had finished it she would both rescue Barney from the bore and gently reproach him for having ignored her. But, before she could put her plate down, she was buttonholed by her admirer, the retired general, who thrust a cup of coffee upon her; and he was such a pleasant old man that she had not the heart to cut him short then push her way across the room to break in on another conversation.

The minutes ticked by without change in the situation until people began to leave. Ratnadatta went out with the richly bejewelled woman and did not return. Barney, who had been listening with only half an ear to reminiscences about a poltergeist, cursed silently, his only reason for having come there having been to get on friendly terms with the Indian.

Quickly, he re-assessed the situation. Through being deprived of the chance of tactfully opening the subject of other occult circles existing which were, perhaps, much more advanced than Mrs. Wardeel's, as a first move in getting Ratnadatta to take him to his, he felt that he had wasted his evening. But not quite, perhaps, as Mary was still there.

He had decided that, lovely as she was to look at, her ill-temper and unpredictability rendered her not worth powder and shot as a woman; but, nevertheless, she had actually been to Ratnadatta's circle, so there was always the chance that she might be in a more amenable mood this evening, and willing to talk about it. Suddenly the boyish smile broke over his round face, he put out his hand to the little babbling brook, seized hers, wrung it heartily and said, 'It's been terribly interesting to hear about your poltergeist; but I must go now. Train to catch. Goodnight.'

Before she quite realized that she had lost her audience, he was across the room and focusing his friendly grin on the retired general. 'Sorry to butt in, Sir; but I promised to see Mrs. Mauriac home, and most people seem to be leaving.'

Mary made no demur until they were in the street, then she said: 'Really! Of all the impudence! First to practically cut me, then stake a claim to me as if I were your . . . your, er . . .' 'Dark lady of the Sonnets,' suggested Barney helpfully. "No, you fool. I mean, as though there were some sort of understanding between us.'

'Well, there is, isn't there?' he countered, with cheerful assurance. 'I like you and you like me. At least I hope you do. I must admit, though, that I'm a bit jealous of this fair-haired chap who is going to take you for a run in the country.'

'Oh, that was all nonsense.' Mary spoke with confidence, yet she had an uneasy memory of the clairvoyant's face as she had warned her that she was heading for trouble. Could she, after all, have seen in her crystal darkly an aura of evil round her questioner, and - sudden thought - could the 'fair-haired chap' possibly be the very tall Satanist who, on the previous Saturday evening, had lifted her off her feet and kissed her until she was gasping for breath?

'Of course,' Barney agreed. 'The old bag was just throwing out whatever struck her as the most likely draw to induce suckers to spend a couple of quid on a private consultation. As I'm dark, in my case it was a ravishing blonde, and the suggestion that she was going to lead me a dance the subtle twist to intrigue me into wanting to hear just what sort of a dance she might lead me. But as I don't happen to be interested in a blonde, and even if I met one, am too busy just now to run after her, Madame Zero, or whatever she calls herself, was barking up the wrong tree.'

Mary did not reply, but she was thinking, 'You don't realize it, my gay boyo, but you are escorting a blonde home here and now, and with a little luck, it's a pretty dance she is going to lead you!' After a moment, she asked: 'What did you think of the lecture?�

'The first part made sense. Everything these people say about reincarnation is so logical that there seems no answer to their arguments in support of it.'

'Yes, there's something awfully reasonable about regarding the world as a school at which we get a move up, or not, at the opening of each new term as a result of the good or bad marks we have earned the term before. It is much more attractive than the idea of a Day of Judgment on which everyone is tried on their performance in a single life and either carried up to heaven or thrown down to hell, for all eternity.'

'I don't mind paying up for my lapses,' Barney remarked, 'but, like old Omar Khayyam, I feel that when the last Trump sounds we'd be justified in saying to God, "You made me as I am, so what about it?" '

Mary laughed. 'I don't think I'd have the courage to do that; and I really am on the way to becoming a reincarnationist. To have made one's own bed and have to lie on it until one can make a better is the sort of treatment no one could reasonably complain about.'

'True enough; but these Theosophists aren't content to accept the basic teaching, and they've gone right off the rails somewhere. How could that American woman, or anyone else, really know about these big shots who are supposed to ordain all that happens in the world. If one took literally what she said about the two great Masters living on either side of a valley in Tibet, it would conjure up a picture of two elderly crap players throwing the dice, one of whom is an American and the other a Russian. As for the Master the Count, if he ever had any existence outside the wildest imagination, I'll bet that by this time his castle in Hungary has been taken over as a free holiday resort for good little Marxists, and that the Reds put the skids under the old gentleman long ago.'

'Of course, you're right.' Mary laughed again. 'And people like Leadbeater and Arundale may have been honest to begin with, but like the ambitious priests of other religions they became corrupted by the power that being leaders of the movement had given them. I haven't the least doubt that they invented all that nonsense about the Hierarchy and their contacts with the Master M. and Koot what's-his-name, just to make their followers treat them as though they were little gods themselves.'

By this time they had arrived in front of the tall old house in which Mary had her flat. As they faced one another, after a moment's hesitation, she said: 'It's not very late. Would you like to come up and share my supper?'

'I'd love to,' he gave her a quick smile, 'if that wouldn't be robbing you too badly.'

'Oh no! That is, if you don't mind something simple, like scrambled eggs?�

'What could be nicer?'

Having been frustrated in his intention of cultivating Ratnadatta, he had decided to ask Mary out to dinner again in the hope that through her he might learn more about the Indian, pending his next chance to get hold of him, which would not be for another week; so her invitation, while it took him by surprise, could not have pleased him better. But as he followed her into the house and upstairs, he felt that it would be wise to keep off the subject for a while, at least; as he thought her such a prickly pear that she might fly into a temper unless he handled her very tactfully.

Mary, meanwhile, was regretting that she could not give him the sort of supper she had prepared the previous week, and wishing that she had tidied up her sitting-room before going out. But she had bought fresh flowers the day before, and the bottle of Hock was still unopened.

While Barney laid the table and opened the wine, she cooked a dish of scrambled eggs, bacon and tomatoes, and as they called to one another during these preparations the very naturalness of this little domestic scene put them more at their ease than they had so far been when together.

Over the meal he got her talking about her work as a model, and of films she had recently seen; so by the time they lit cigarettes with their coffee, her mind was a long way from the supernatural and it came as quite a shock when he asked:

'How did you get on last Saturday?�

His question had been quite casual, but it instantly brought back to her the scene in the Temple. Swiftly averting her eyes, she played for time. 'On Saturday? What do you mean?�

'Why, you told me you were going to meet that chap Ratnadatta again.'

'Er . . . yes; of course.'

He smiled at her. 'Well, how did the party go?�

'Oh, much the same as on the previous Saturday.'

'Just Yoga, and that sort of thing?'

She nodded.

'Look,' he said, 'I'd like to learn a bit about Yoga. Will you take me along to Ratnadatta's place one evening?'

'No. I couldn't do that. I'm not a member and one has to be introduced by somebody who is.'

'I see. Well, anyway, you might let me have the address; then I'll write him a line and ask him if he will introduce me.'

'I can't. I don't know it.' The moment she had spoken she realized that she had made a stupid admission which might lead him to suppose that something less innocent than Yoga went on there, but he only shrugged and remarked:

'Of course, I'd forgotten. He blindfolds you when he takes you there, doesn't he?'

'Oh no.' She quickly retrieved her error. 'I made that up just as I did about the Great Ram and his black imp, and all the other things I told you. The only reason I can't give you the address is that I didn't hear Ratnadatta give it to the taxi-driver either time, and it is in a district that I've never been to before; so all I know is that it's somewhere up in North London.'

Barney knew that she was lying, and it was clear that she did not mean to tell him anything, so he said: 'It doesn't matter. I meant to ask Ratnadatta tonight about his Yoga circle, but I didn't get the chance. I'll have another shot when I see him at Mrs. Wardeel's next week.'

He then tactfully changed the conversation, but her reaction to his questions worried him. As she did not know where the place was to which Ratnadatta took her that meant that he really did blindfold her when taking her there; and he would not do that unless something much more sinister than the innocent practice of Yoga went on at his circle. That being so, she must be playing with fire and might get herself badly burnt. If she would, or could, have let him go with her next time she indulged her curiosity about occult mysteries, that would have been one thing; but for her to continue going on her own to these parties was quite another. In consequence, after they had talked cheerfully again for a further half-hour, and he stood up to go, he said:

'Listen, Margot. You're a queer girl, and a bit of a mystery, living on your own like this with no family and apparently very few friends. But I like you a lot, and I'm worried about you.'

She smiled at him. 'Why should you be? There are lots of girls like me earning a living in London on their own.'

'Not many who are so darn good-looking,' he grinned back. 'But that's beside the point at the moment; and I'll tell you why I'm worried. I was watching your face this evening when that old crystal-gazing bag told you that you were heading for trouble.'

'What, with a fair-haired boy-friend? Don't worry. I'm not a precocious school girl, to be lured to her fate by the offer of a ride in a Jaguar.'

'Of course not. But I mean before she mentioned him. It was when she warned you to watch your step. She rang a bell then; because for a moment you looked as if you were scared to death. You are frightened of something. I'm sure of it. And I've a hunch that Mr. Ratnadatta is the nigger in your wood-pile. He may only be teaching you Yoga exercises at the moment, but you know yourself, or anyhow suspect, that it's leading up to something pretty dangerous. I want you to cut Ratnadatta out. Promise me not to go with him to this place again, there's a good girl.'

She shook her head. 'I'm afraid I can't do that; and, as I've told you, I'm quite capable of looking after myself.'

'Well, cut him out for the time being, then. Come and dine and dance with me again. Let's put on our glad rags on Saturday and go to the Berkeley.'

For a moment Mary hesitated. Ratnadatta had not asked her to meet him on Saturday; he had even implied that it might be some weeks before he took her to the Temple again, so why should she not accept Barney's invitation?

'Very well,' she said, accompanying him to the door of the flat, 'I'd love to; and I'm awfully sorry about our last evening together having been such a flop. As a matter of fact, I'd formed a little plan to make amends.'

'You had nothing to make amends for. That was up to me for having ruined your dress.'

'No, it was my fault, and if I'd had any sense I'd have asked you to bring me back here at once so that I could change it; then we could have gone up there again, and still had a couple of hours' dancing. But that never occurred to me, and next day I felt awful about the way I'd treated you. I expected to see you at Mrs. Wardeel's last Tuesday and meant to ask you here to supper as some compensation for having ruined Saturday evening. If you had been there you would have fared much better than you have tonight; Westphalian ham, fresh salmon and all the trimmings.'

'Really?' A delighted grin spread over Barney's face. 'Margot, you are a dear. If it wouldn't be taking advantage of your having asked me up to your flat, I'd kiss you. But sometime, perhaps. Anyway, see you Saturday. I'll come down about 7.30 to pick you up; and thanks for this evening. Goodnight.'

With a look of astonishment on her face, Mary stared at his curly hair and broad shoulders as he went down the first flight of stairs. 'Taking advantage' of her! She could hardly believe she had heard aright. Of all the men in the world, Barney Sullivan was the very last she would have expected to let his evident desires be hampered by old-fashioned notions about chivalrous conduct. Could it really be possible that the leopard had changed his spots?

Turning on the lower landing, Barney gave her a cheerful wave, then disappeared from her view. As he descended the rest of the stairs he was thinking. 'She really is a peach, and there can be no doubt about it that she likes me. Saturday should be fun. I wish to God, though, that she wasn't mixed up with that swine Ratnadatta.'

Not being aware that Mary had no appointment with the Indian on Saturday, he went on to congratulate himself on having anyhow stalled her off from going to the circle again for, as he thought, another eleven days; and that, he hoped, would be enough for him to queer Ratnadatta's pitch with her altogether.

Having nothing special to report that week, Barney did not go to the office until Friday, and then only because C.B. had sent for him. The Colonel's reason for doing so was to show him the list of people who paid money into the bank account of the Manual Workers' Benevolent Society. Giving him a copy of the pass-book sheets for the past year, Verney said:

'Sit down and take a gander over that, young feller. Those are the boys and girls who wittingly, or unwittingly, finance some of these unofficial strikes, and probably other Communist activities as well.'

Barney took the wad of sheets and ran his eye down one after another. In several instances there were in-payments of as much as a thousand pounds, and against these the names were nearly all foreign; but the great majority were British and most of them appeared regularly early in every month for amounts ranging from twenty to one hundred pounds. The contributors were men and women in about equal numbers but, apart from the names of a film star, a Conservative M.P., and a big motor-car manufacturer, they meant nothing to him.

Handing the list back, he said: 'I don't get it, Sir. To contribute such big sums, most of these people must be jolly well off. That's not to say that some of them may not be generous enough to give lavishly to all sorts of charities; and presumably, in this case, they have no idea of the use to which their money is being put. But it seems odd that a Tory M.P. should cough up forty pounds a month regularly to a workers' benevolent, and old Benson, who runs Roadswift Motors, has the reputation of a skinflint.'

'I don't get it either,' agreed C.B. 'During the past week we have managed to identify most of the contributors. They are all rich and there are a number of titled people among them. With the assistance of the Treasury we've worked it out that, on average, they are putting into this show about twenty-five per cent of their incomes; and, super-tax being what it is, what in the world can induce them to do that? It doesn't make sense. Neither do the bigger payments. One is from a Dutch bulb-grower, another from an Indian Rajah, a third from an Argentine meat shipper. They were all on visits to this country at the time their payments were made. Why should wealthy foreigners, who are here only temporarily, suddenly donate big sums to help along British working families that have struck it unlucky?'

'Ask me another, Sir. Unless . . .' Barney paused a moment, 'unless they do know what the money is being used for and are fellow travellers. There are rich people who believe that Communism is bound to get the upper hand here in the long run, and this crowd may be paying a form of insurance to be allowed to hang on to the bulk of their fortunes if the worst happened.'

'That's a thought,' Verney conceded. 'But I can't believe it is so. Short of our losing an atomic war, Britain is as safe from having a Communist Government in the foreseeable future as she is from being submerged by another Flood. Awfully few rich people can be so batty as to believe otherwise. In any case, I'm convinced that the majority of the contributors can't know the sort of thuggery they are supporting with their money. There is a Bishop among them, an Admiral and two Generals; all die-hard Tories who'd sooner be cut in pieces than knowingly contribute to Communist funds. I wanted you to look through the list, though, just in case you happened to know anything odd about any of them.'

Barney shook his head. 'As no ranks or titles appear on cheques, and many of them are only surnames with initials, the only name I recognized at first sight, apart from the Tory M.P. and the motor-magnate, was that of Diane Duveen, and I should not have thought a little blonde smack-bot like that would have enough brain to be interested in any serious movement.'

'No, she is a bit out of series. To the majority of them a common denominator applies; they are super-tax payers, middle-aged to elderly, not known to have any affiliations with Labour or to be particularly generous to other charities and, outwardly, at least, respectable. But that doesn't get us anywhere.'

With a shrug of his lean shoulders, Verney put the pass sheets in a drawer, and added: 'Well, that's that; no doubt we'll solve the puzzle in due course. Now tell me what you've been up to?�

'The usual thing, Sir. Attending branch meetings most nights, and getting a bit closer to my Communist buddies in between times. I handed a detailed report in to your P.A. just now. There is nothing in it of special interest; but I've made one bit of progress on what you call my second string.'

'You mean Mrs. Wardeel's set-up and the lovely that you have been interesting yourself in?�

'That's it; Mrs. Mauriac. We had a bit of an upset when I last took her out, two Sundays ago; but I saw her again on Tuesday at Mrs. Wardeel's and we patched it up. In fact, she took me back to her flat afterwards and gave me supper.'

'She did, eh!' C.B. raised a prawn-like eyebrow. Then I'll have to ask you for your expense money back.'

Barney grinned. 'No, there was nothing like that. And I couldn't get her to talk. All the same, I'm convinced that her pal, the Indian occultist Ratnadatta, is leading her into something pretty nasty; and I'm more than ever inclined to believe that Ratnadatta got hold of Teddy Morden and led him up the same street.'

'When we last talked of this you said the Mauriac woman had assured you that Ratnadatta's circle went in only for Yoga. What has happened since to convince you that she was lying?'

'Well, first go off she 'fessed up to Ratnadatta's crowd being a bunch of Satanists and said he had blindfolded her both going to and returning from their hang-out. Then spilling a glass of wine seemed to rattle her, and she abruptly took it all back; swore she had only been pulling my leg. But she had already told me that she was going for the second time to a meeting there with Ratnadatta the following Saturday. Last night I tackled her about it. She tried to sell me the Yoga stuff again, and refused to tell me where the meeting place is. As I had no means of making her, she could have got away with that if she hadn't made a stupid blunder. She said that she couldn't give me the address of the place because it is in a district in which she had never been before, somewhere up in North London.'

'And what do you deduce from that?'

'That she honestly does not know where it is; so she really must have been blindfolded both times when she was taken to it. And Ratnadatta would not have taken the precaution of blindfolding her unless something much more sinister than Yoga goes on there.'

'Come, come! It's too much to expect any woman to know every district well enough to identify a street in which she is set down from a taxi after dark!'

'I agree; but where she bogged it was telling me that the place was in North London.'

'Why shouldn't it be?'

'Because I know that it was not. She was taken to a house off the far end of the King's Road, Chelsea. That S.W.10 district, as you know, is now made up of big blocks of post-war Council flats, mostly built on sites that were left derelict by bombs, and streets of slums that escaped them. This place is down near the river, only a stone's throw from where Cremorne Gardens used to be. At one time I believe they rivalled Vauxhall Gardens as a favourite haunt of eighteenth century boys and girls at which to have their fun.'

'How did you find out that she was taken there?'

'She had told me that she was going to meet Ratnadatta at Sloane Square Tube at nine-thirty. I parked my car nearby, watched them meet and, when they got into a taxi, followed them.'

Verney gave a thin-lipped smile. 'Good work, partner; good work. And what sort of a place was it that he took her to?'

'An old Georgian mansion, most of which is concealed behind high walls. Sounds a bit improbable in a slum quarter like that; but that's why I mentioned Cremorne Gardens having once been nearby. This place must be a relic from those days. Its entrance can be approached only down a cul-de-sac, and they're darned careful not to attract the attention of the locals to the fact that quite large meetings are held there. In a courtyard in front of the house there were a few cars, but I stooged around for about half-an-hour and nearly all the people who entered the place, including Ratnadatta and Mrs. Mauriac, either paid off their taxis or parked their cars some way off, because they arrived at the place on foot.'

After pulling at his thin-stemmed pipe thoughtfully for a minute, Verney opened a drawer in his desk, took out a folder, threw it across to Barney, and said: 'I'd like you to read that through. It's a report, by our man at the Long-Range Rocket Experimental Station down in Wales, on a scientist there who seems to be going a bit round the bend, and a statement by the egg-head himself. Take it over to the armchair by the window while I get on with some other work. When you've done, let me know what you think of it.'

Barney moved over to the window and spent the next twenty minutes reading through the contents of the folder. To Squadron-Leader Forsby's original report and the two sections of Otto Khune's account of his strange association with his brother, Lothar, a final document dated two days previously had been added.

It was a letter from Forsby in which he said that Otto appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown and had given out to his colleagues, as a reason for his state, that he was suffering from terrible nightmares; so Forsby had installed a tape-recorder id the scientist's bedroom on the chance that it might pick up something if he talked in his sleep.

It had. From the long jumbles of talk that had been recorded, it emerged that Lothar was proposing a clandestine exchange of secret information about the latest rocket fuels, by which, he argued, each of them could gain great prestige as a scientist on producing as his own discovery the other's knowledge. Just as he had in 1950, he was now working on Otto and pressing him to meet him in London on the coming Saturday or, if he could not manage that, on the Saturday that followed, and showing him in his dreams a house to which he should come at midday, with directions how to find it.

When Barney reached that passage, he jumped to his feet and exclaimed: 'C.B.! Sorry, Sir, I mean. The description of the place at which Lothar wants Otto to meet him next weekend ...'

The buzzer on the Colonel's desk sounded, cutting him short. Verney answered it, then looked back at Barney and nodded.

'That is why I asked you to read the Khune file. I felt pretty certain you'd confirm my impression. It tallies with yours of this Georgian mansion to which Ratnadatta took Mrs. Mauriac'

CHAPTER XII A TANGLED SKEIN

On the previous Tuesday night Mary had gone to bed in a very happy frame of mind. For the best part of two hours she had forgotten her loneliness and bitterness and had felt more like her normally cheerful self than at any time since she had lost her husband. Barney's anxiety that she should break off her association with Ratnadatta had obviously been inspired by genuine concern for her, and to have once more a man eager to safeguard her well-being was just the tonic she had needed.

Even so, by Wednesday evening she had decided that leopards did not change their spots. There was no mistaking from his attitude that he would like to start an affair with her, so his wish to protect her from trouble could as equally well be put down to a selfish, as an unselfish, motive. Recalling the way in which he had left her in such a desperate plight five years ago, she felt convinced that his nature could not have altered, and that he would still use his gay attractiveness to get what he could out of any pretty woman, then leave her in the lurch the moment it suited him.

But, she thought, with a suggestion of cynical amusement, it was he, and not she, who was now playing with fire; for she knew his form, whereas he still knew nothing about her except what he had learnt since their meeting just over a fortnight before. Moreover, as a companion he was great fun, and there was no reason at all for her to hurry the denouement of her plan; so why should she not enjoy as long as possible the benefits of the present situation? It would be time enough to tell him that she was the Mary McCreedy he had put in the family way at the age of eighteen and then deserted when he made the pace too hot for her to keep him on a string any longer. In this mood she began to look forward to Saturday, and when he called for her that evening she greeted him with her loveliest smile.

He had brought his car and, after dropping her at the Berkeley, left it in the garage at the bottom of Hay Hill, then rejoined her. As they had both determined to make the evening a success, it went well from the start. Both of them had healthy appetites, so enjoyed their dinners, and when they danced afterwards, just as had been the case before, they forgot everything else in the pleasure of the movement and rhythm. The time went all too quickly and when the restaurant began to empty he suggested that they should go on to Churchill's. She willingly agreed, so they took a taxi round to Bond Street and spent two more happy hours dancing and talking in the dim rose-shaded light of the night-club.

It was getting on for three in the morning by the time he pulled up in his car with her in Cromwell Road. Having thanked him for a lovely evening before getting out, she said:

'I'm afraid it's too late to ask you in, but here is something you wanted the other evening.' Then she leaned towards him quickly and kissed him.

He put out an arm to catch her to him; but she already had one hand on the door handle, so was able to slip out of his embrace and from the car on to the pavement.

'Hi!' he exclaimed. 'That's only a sample. Don't leave a poor fellow to go thirsting to his bed. Come back, there's a sweet.'

'No,' she laughed, 'that's enough for now,' and turned to run up the steps to the house.

Scrambling out, he hurried after her, and caught her by the arm.

'No! Please Barney. Not in the street,' she said quickly.

'All right,' he agreed reluctantly. 'But what about tomorrow? Today, rather. How about coming for a run in the car and lunching somewhere in the country?'

'If it's a fine day, I'd love to,' she replied at once.

'Splendid!' he grinned. 'I'll pick you up then. Shall we say half-past eleven?'

Getting out her latch-key, she nodded. 'I expect I'll come to about ten; so that should be all right. Goodnight, my dear.'

'Margot, you're a honey! But it's "good-morning", and we're all set now for a happy day together. Happy dreams!'

By mid-morning the weather prospects had worsened and, although it was not actually raining, grey clouds obscured the sky; but they decided to risk the weather and drive down to the Hut, at Wisley.

Just as he felt certain that she had been lying to him about what went on in Ratnadatta's circle, she felt sure that he had lied to her about his being Lord Larne, and that his story of being in England only on a visit from Kenya was a wily stratagem put out in advance, which would provide him with the excuse that he had to return there should he wish to terminate any love affair that looked like becoming troublesome for him. So on their way down into Surrey, she amused herself by asking him, with apparent innocence, a number of awkward questions.

Although unsuspicious of her motive, he was far too old a hand at posing under a false identity to let himself be caught out easily, and by now he had had ample time to get used to thinking of himself, when with her, as a titled visitor from Kenya. About his having a car, he said, he had hired it for his stay; about the length of his visit, that it would depend on how long it took to complete the tie-ups for his travel agency, and that would take another month, at least; about where he was staying, that he was lucky in having many friends who were willing to put him up for a few nights at a time, so he moved around from one to another; about his home in Kenya, that he had a house in one of the better suburbs of Nairobi, but not a very large one as he was not particularly well off; about his parents, that both of them had died while he was still young, which was the truth; and he was able to keep her amused for quite a time by improvising on an imaginary upbringing.

She scored only one hit, and that was when she asked him to tell her where he was staying at the moment, in case she wanted to get in touch with him. In reply he had to give her the address of his flat in Warwick Square, but he said that it had been temporarily lent to him by a friend of his and, as he was a stranger there, any message for him should be sent care of Mr. Sullivan.

Having pushed him into using his own name and, as she saw it, as good as admitting that he had no right to a title, gave her a quiet laugh; but afterwards she wondered a little grimly how many young women he had led up the garden path by the idea that he might make them the Countess of Lame.

They lunched at the Hut hotel and the rain held off until they were half way through the meal, but then for about half-an-hour it came down hard. Barney had been hoping that during the afternoon they would be able to go for a walk in the woods, and find some pleasant spot suitable for improving their relationship from the point it had reached in the early hours of that morning, but as the rain had made mossy banks and fallen tree-trunks too wet to sit on he had, for the time being, to confine his amorous intentions to getting closer to Mary mentally, in a long talk.

They discussed many things and found they had many tastes in common so, by the time they returned to the Hut for tea, a much greater degree of intimacy had been established between them, and he felt that his afternoon had been far from wasted. Unfortunately, however, he was debarred from following it up. That evening he had to attend a subscription concert got up by some of his Communist contacts at which one of their number was to receive a presentation on retirement from office; so he had to excuse himself to Mary for not asking her out to dinner by saying that he had a long-standing date, that he could not break, to dine with friends whom he had entertained when they were on a visit to Kenya.

Throughout the day he had purposely refrained from mentioning Ratnadatta, but he had every intention of doing so before they parted; so he was pleased when, on their way back to London, she raised the subject herself by remarking: 'I take it that you will be going to Mrs. Wardeel's on Tuesday and that I shall see you next there?'

He looked at her in feigned surprise. 'Yes, I'm going. But surely you don't mean to change your mind? You can't let me down like that?'

'Let you down?' she frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'Why, you promised me only last Tuesday that you would keep clear of Ratnadatta�for a while, anyway.'

She hesitated for a second, then took refuge in a prevarication. 'I didn't go out with him last night.'

'No, bless you. But that's all the more reason for avoiding him on Tuesday. You'll escape having to make excuses, then, perhaps being wheedled into promising to go to his circle with him this coming Saturday.'

'I ought to apologize to him for not turning up,' she prevaricated again.

'To hell with that! He's up to no good, and you promised me to have no more to do with him for the time being.'

'By that I thought you meant not going to his circle.'

'I did, as I am sure that doing so is really dangerous for you. But I also think that when you talk to him he exerts a dangerous influence over you. So I really meant for you to keep away from him altogether.'

'He couldn't do me any harm at Mrs. Wardeel's, especially if you are there with me.'

'I don't agree. You've refused to cut him out for good; so even talking to him again might tempt you into attending another of his meetings sooner than you otherwise would.'

As she did not reply, he put out a hand, took hers, and went on: 'Forgive me if I am making a nuisance of myself, my sweet; but I'm becoming terribly fond of you, and I can't bear the thought of your being led into the sort of filthy business that I believe is Ratnadatta's real game. Give me a little time to find out a bit about him. If he turns out to be only an honest practitioner of Yoga, we'll go to his parties together and learn to keep ourselves warm by rhythmic breathing, or whatever they do. But if you won't agree to keep clear of him for a few weeks, you are going to be the cause of my having an awful lot of sleepless nights.'

Mary had been thinking furiously. Ten days ago it would have given her considerable pleasure to picture Barney twisting and turning in his bed, a prey to agonizing thoughts of her being raped by Satanists; but that was so no longer. Her naturally generous nature made her feel that it would be horribly unkind to inflict such torture by imagination on anyone who was striving to protect her. But what would happen if she disobeyed Ratnadatta's order, and failed to appear at Mrs. Wardeel's on Tuesday? Would he descend upon her, demand an explanation and, if he did not consider it satisfactory, ill-wish her? It was a frightening thought. She had herself witnessed examples of the power of the Great Ram. Ratnadatta's, although far less, might still be formidable. But she could say she had been ill and, if he had not actually been overlooking her at the time, how could he be certain that she was lying? The fact that Barney would be there, somewhere in the offing, to stand by her, finally outweighed her fears, and she said:

'All right, then. I won't go on Tuesday. But come to supper again afterwards and tell me how the meeting went.'

To that he cheerfully agreed and, a quarter-of-an-hour later, he set her down with a smiling farewell in Cromwell Road.

Before going to the subscription concert, Barney had another date to keep. It was with C.B. at a small hotel in Chelsea to which the Colonel sometimes asked his young men to come if he wished to see them on a Sunday and did not want to go up to the office.

At their last meeting on Friday, after it had emerged that Lothar was pressing Otto to keep an appointment with him at the old house in Cremorne, they had gone very thoroughly into the implications of this unexpected link between the twin of the scientist down in Wales and Ratnadatta's circle.

Up to the point of that discovery, while reading Otto Khune's statement, Barney had been strongly of the impression that the scientist had become the victim of hallucinations; but he had described the old mansion with such unmistakable clearness that, short of the whole document being an apparently pointless fraud, it seemed that a vision of it really must have been conveyed to him by psychic means.

C.B., who knew much more about such matters, had also pointed out that, according to the statement, the twins had been gifted from childhood with supernatural powers, and many times in their lives each had used those powers to inform himself about the situation of the other. Moreover Lothar, in whom the power was evidently greater, having used it with such vicious unscrupulousness to wreck his brother's marriage, obviously had an intensely evil personality; so, his turning out to be a Satanist was not particularly surprising.

The passages in Otto's statement describing his meeting with Lothar in 1950 made it clear that the latter was working for the Russians. The purpose of his visit to London then had been to induce Otto to return to Russia with him; his purpose now was, obviously, to tickle Otto's vanity with the prospect of securing data which would give him new triumphs in his own scientific field, then to trick him in the exchange and make off with the formula of Britain's latest rocket fuel. In any case, there could be little doubt that he was acting as a Communist agent.

The fact that he was both a Communist and a Satanist had raised the interesting question of how far might a tie-up exist between these two supposedly separate forces for evil? It could be that Lothar was using the old mansion in Cremorne from time to time simply as a guest. Satanism, as Verney knew, was world wide, and Black Magic still practised in every country under the sun; so Lothar could have secured an introduction from a Satanic circle to which he belonged abroad to the circle in London. If so, it did not follow that his hosts knew him to be a Soviet agent, or even that he was a Communist, and they themselves might play no part in Communist activities.

But Verney had told Barney that he regarded that as most unlikely. From the beginning he had believed that Teddy Morden had died as the victim of a human sacrifice to Satan. There was no factual evidence that he had ever gone to the mansion in Cremorne but the circumstantial evidence that he had done so was too strong not to be accepted. Not only had the nightmares that had afflicted Morden for several weeks before his death been of a nature to indicate very strongly that he was attending Black Magic ceremonies, but during them he had also several times mentioned an Indian. They knew Morden to have been a regular attendant at Mrs. Wardeel's as, too, was Ratnadatta; and Barney had established the fact that the Indian was a link between her Theosophist circle and the Satanist circle at Cremorne, so it now seemed as good as certain that Ratnadatta had taken Morden there. But why should the Satanists have murdered him? His mission had had nothing to do with occultism of any kind. It had been the very down-to-earth business of finding out the ramifications of the Communist campaign to sabotage British industry. Yet it must have been something to do with that which had led him to Mrs. Wardeel's and to cultivate Ratnadatta; and, later, the discovery of what Morden was up to that had led to his death.

If that was so, it followed that Lothar was not making use of the house at Cremorne just because he had the entree to it as a Satanist; it must be because the Satanic circle there was hand-in-glove with the Communists.

To have reached this conclusion was most satisfactory to C.B. and Barney, as they felt that it gave them an excellent chance of killing two evil birds with one stone. But the problem remained of how best to arrange matters so as to get the maximum number of this devilish crew in the bag at one fell swoop.

Apparently Lothar came to the house at Cremorne only on Saturdays, so to raid the place on any other day would leave him at large. It was, too, on Saturday nights that the Satanist circle gathered there, so there was good reason to believe that he came up from some hide-out on that day to be present at their weekly celebration. If, therefore, Special Branch surrounded the place the following evening and raided it about eleven o'clock, they should get him in the net with his associates.

Against such a proceeding there was one snag. The law of England was cumbersome and, owing to its proper concern with protecting the rights of the individual, often made the task of the Security Services extremely difficult. Even should the Satanists be caught naked in the midst of an orgy, whoever owned the place, or was its legal tenant, could be charged only with using it for immoral purposes, and those caught in it with indecent behaviour. Lothar, if it transpired that he was accredited to the Soviet Embassy, might plead diplomatic privilege, and so escape scot-free.

On the other hand, if Otto had called on him there earlier in the day, it would be a very different matter. Once the brothers had actually met, .even if Lothar was not caught with British scientific data on him, the tape recordings Forsby had secured, which gave the reason for their meeting, could be used to incriminate them.

In consequence, Verney had decided to have the house at Cremorne watched in case Otto gave way and came to the rendezvous next day. If he did, the place was to be raided that night. If not, they would hold their hands till next Saturday, then repeat the drill.

C.B. had then told Barney that he had to be out of London on other business for the next two nights, so would not be able to let him know what had happened till Sunday, and made an appointment for them to have a drink together that evening.

Barney found his Colonel in a snug little parlour at the back of the hotel and, having been provided with a drink, eagerly enquired what had taken place at Cremorne the previous day.

'No luck, partner,' C.B. replied at once. 'As a matter of fact I had no great expectations anyway. Lothar gave Otto the choice of two Saturdays and it's only natural that anyone under pressure should postpone the issue up till the last moment. It's quite on the cards that he won't give way at all or, if he does come up next Saturday, it will be with the intention of murdering Lothar. But if he doesn't, Lothar won't leave it at that. You can bet on it that rather than go back to Russia empty handed he'll make some other move; and the more desperate he gets, the better chance we'll have of pulling him in red-handed.'

'Was Lothar seen to go to the house?' Barney asked.

Verney shook his head. 'From nine o'clock on in the morning no one resembling him turned into the alley leading to the place; and, as he is Otto's twin, I was able to give Special Branch a pretty good description of him from that I obtained of Otto from Forsby. But, of course, he may have come up from the country on Friday and spent the night there, or perhaps his psychic faculties told him that Otto did not mean to play, so there was no point in his turning up himself.'

'While they were keeping observation did the police pick up anything fresh about the place?'

'Nothing. Apart from deliveries of food, it had the appearance all day of being deserted. Between nine and ten in the evening five cars arrived containing seven people, and a further twenty-one came to it on foot. From about four in the morning they began to leave and by six they had all dispersed. None of them appeared to have been drunk or could have been pulled in for any other reason; and, anyway, I'd given orders that, unless Lothar and Otto had both put in an appearance, nothing was to be done which would prematurely stir up this nest of vipers.'

After thinking for a moment, Barney said: 'It looks to me, Sir, as if Otto is true blue and means to dig his toes in; so how about trying to get him to act as a stool-pigeon? Seeing that he has such good cause to hate Lothar's guts, he might.'

C.B. smiled. 'Good mark to you, young feller, for thinking of it; but I've already cast that one out. In any ordinary case that line would be well worth trying, but in this it would be running too much of a risk. Otto might agree to play but, as Lothar is overlooking him, there is quite a chance that our enemy would tumble to what was going on. Once he realized that we are after him he might skip, and we don't want that. I think that, short of Forsby reporting some quite unexpected move, we'll continue to play it quietly for another week.'

To decrease the possibility of Mary - or Margot, as he knew her - becoming further involved with Ratnadatta, Barney would have liked to see the Satanist headquarters at Cremorne closed down without delay; but he appreciated that to raid it at any time other than when a meeting was being held there would be throwing away an opportunity to break up the circle much more effectively.

For a while they continued to discuss various aspects of the affair, then Barney finished his drink, excused himself, and drove to his rooms in Warwick Square to change out of his country clothes into things more suitable for attending a Communist social.

On the Tuesday Mary made similar preparations to those she had a fortnight before, then waited impatiently, through what seemed one of the longest evenings she had ever spent, for Barney to join her.

At last he arrived, smiling as usual. Within seconds of greeting him she asked anxiously: 'Did Ratnadatta speak to you about me? Was he very angry?�

Barney gave her a shrewd look. 'You are frightened of him, aren't you? It makes me all the more glad that I prevented you from seeing him this evening. No; he didn't even mention you, although I managed to get him to myself for five minutes.'

As she led the way into the sitting-room, she enquired: 'How did you get on with him?'

'Not as well as I had hoped. I only prised him away with difficulty from an old trout smothered in rocks, and he was impatient to get back to her. It's pretty clear that he is out to get anyone with some special asset-money, position or beauty - into his net, and in my own case I was banking on my title to act as bait. I think it did to some extent, because he didn't actually turn me down. But I imagine that for the time being he's got his hands full with yourself and the female Croesus. I hinted that I thought the mediums I had seen at Mrs. Wardeel's a bit suspect, and understood that past-masters in Yoga could produce the real thing, then suggested that as he was an Indian he might perhaps know of compatriots living in London who were practitioners of the art.'

'And what did he say?'

'That he did not, as he had never interested himself in Yoga.'

Mary's glance wavered. 'How very strange!'

Barney's smile held no hint of accusation, and he replied: 'Not necessarily. He may not have thought me a good Yoga subject. He did say, though, that he was in touch with occultists who had passed a higher degree of initiation than any I was likely to meet at Mrs. Wardeel's, and that he might, perhaps, some time introduce me to some of them. But he thought that before we talked of the matter further, it would be a good thing if I acquired a better background knowledge of the occult by continuing to attend the lectures at Mrs. W.'s for another month or so.'

'I see; and do you intend to do that?'

'Certainly; if he insists on it. But, as I am pretty good at selling myself, I hope to persuade him to adopt a more forthcoming attitude next week. Let's forget all this now, though, and talk of something else. To be honest, too, I had no time to get a snack before going to the meeting, so I'm absolutely famished.'

The table was already laid. Glad to drop the subject, Mary told him to sit down at it, and hurried into her kitchenette. For a first course, as the weather had turned cold, she had heated up some tomato soup, to which she now added a good dollop of cream. As she did so she thought first how decent it was of Barney to have refrained from tackling her about Ratnadatta's having denied all knowledge of Yoga, and then of the way that the Indian had stalled him off.

She felt very glad that Ratnadatta had, otherwise he might have sounded Barney out over a dinner next Saturday then, perhaps, have taken him on to the Temple and given him a sight from the balcony of what went on there. A fortnight ago, with the idea of leading Barney to believe that she was a bold and sophisticated woman, she had started to tell him about what she had seen herself; only the spilling of the wine had caused her afterwards to insist that she had been fooling, and now she was very glad about that, because her attitude towards him had undergone a subtle change. She knew she would be ashamed if he found out that she really had let Ratnadatta take her to such a party and, instead of breaking with him, still refused to give any promise that she would not go with him to the Temple again.

But soon such thoughts were driven from her mind by Barney's gay, inconsequent chatter, as they tucked in to the good things she had provided for their supper and shared another bottle of the excellent Hock. Afterwards they sat down side by side on the sofa and she felt sure that, as she had kissed him on Saturday, this evening he would display no ultra chivalrous scruples about being in her flat, but soon start making love to her.

She had meant him to from the beginning and now, her original motive temporarily forgotten, she knew that she wanted him to. But, on a typical feminine impulse to postpone the moment a little longer, she lit a cigarette and asked: 'What was the lecture about this evening?'

"The Vedas,' he replied, 'and how Theosophy ties up with the sacred writings of the Hindus. I can't say that it gave me a yen to take up the study of Indian mythology as a hobby, but at least it made more sense than they gave us last week about old Koot Hoomi and the Master the Count. The second part of the show was a bit of a flop, though. They put a large table in the middle of the room and six people and a medium sat round it. Then they set about receiving spirit messages by table rapping. It was a slow and dreary business, and only one came through that was of any interest.'

'And what was that?' she asked.

Turning his head he looked straight into her eyes, and said: 'Some big shot up on the astral plane wanted to know why you hadn't reported for duty.'

Mary jumped to her feet; her mouth fell open, her blue eyes went round with terror, and she cried, 'No, Barney; no! You don't mean it!'

He had got the type of reaction he had played for, but far more strongly than he had expected. Standing up, he exclaimed: 'Hi, steady on! Of course not. I was only fooling.'

'Oh, thank God for that!' she gasped. 'Thank God for that! You gave me a most awful fright.' Next moment her mouth began to tremble and she burst into tears.

Swiftly he gathered her into his arms, and made little comforting noises while for several minutes she sobbed upon his chest. Then, when her sobs eased a little, he said: 'My sweet, I'm terribly sorry that I scared you so badly, but I had to know the truth. You've given yourself away now, and you really must come clean with me. You've got in deeper than I thought, and ...'

'No ... really,' she sniffled. 'I haven't seen Ratnadatta recently. I swear I haven't. Not since I promised you I wouldn't.'

'Well, that's some comfort. But tonight he blew wide open your story about Yoga being his game. It's nothing of the kind, and you had started to tell me about it that night at the Hungaria when we spilt the wine. That's the truth, isn't it?'

'Yes,' she murmured tearfully.

He kissed her on the forehead, then said, with a frown: 'You're a darling, Margot, and what puzzles me is how a decent girl like you could even contemplate taking part in such beastliness.'

'I ... I have a very good reason.'

Tell me what it is?�

'No, please don't ask me.'

'Is it something to do with your past?'

'Yes.'

'All right, then. Don't treat me as though I were a starry-eyed youth who'd never heard the facts of life. At times everyone does things they are ashamed of afterwards. I don't give a damn what you've done.'

'It's nothing I am ashamed of.'

'Then why on earth won't you tell me what it is?�

'I can't. Really I can't. If I did you might insist on trying to help me.'

'All the more reason to go ahead.'

'No. I'm not going to let you run into danger, just because I've been fool enough to bite off more than I can chew.'

'Margot, you must tell me! You've got yourself in the hell of a mess. It's as clear as daylight that you're scared stiff of something. I love you, my dear, and . . .'

She suddenly lifted her face to his and, her eyes still misty with tears, cried, 'Do you mean that?�

For a second Barney was a little taken aback. He enjoyed his life as a bachelor and did not want to put it into her head that he was on the verge of proposing to her; so he replied with a smile, 'Wanting to protect someone is one of the first symptoms, isn't it? If so, I've got it. And I'm determined to free you from the cause of your terror. But I can't fight your battle if you leave me in the dark. That's why you must tell me how you got drawn in to this thing.'

'Well ... all right, then. I'll give you my reason for leading Ratnadatta on until he took me to his Temple. But nothing more. Nothing. You understand? It was because I hoped it might lead to my being avenged on someone.'

Barney gave her a surprised look. 'Really! I shouldn't have thought you were a vindictive sort of girl. Of course, when a hurt has had lasting consequences, wanting to get one's own back is very natural. Still, what you tell me surprises me all the more because I thought you had become a believer in Reincarnation.'

'I have. But I don't see what that's got to do with it.'

'Then you can't have consciously taken in one of its principal teachings. As I understand it, every evil deed has to be paid for either in this or some future life. There is no escaping that, but payment may be made in one of two ways. Either the injured party exercises his right to return tit for tat or, failing that, Karma takes the form of appearing to have some natural cause -like a brick falling on the head of a chap who at some time in the past had hit someone on the head with a hammer. That someone could have hit him back and, providing the blow was no harder, not received a bad mark. But progress to a higher state can be made only by learning forgiveness, and refusing to take such opportunities. If you are still running around with a tomahawk, you're not going to stand much chance of getting yourself promoted from one of the lower forms in this vale of tears.'

They were still standing in front of the fireplace, he with one arm about her, and she looking down. Now she raised her head, and said: 'I suppose you are right. I heard it all, of course; but, somehow, I failed to apply it to myself.'

'You will, though, won't you?' he urged. 'Please Margot. Give up this idea of seeking revenge.'

Suddenly she began to laugh. She was still wrought up and her laughter held a slightly hysterical note. It had just occurred to her that, although completely ignorant of the fact, Barney was also implying that she should give up her plan for being revenged on him and that, if she did, in some future life as a young girl, someone would put him in the family way.

Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick shake and said, sharply: 'Stop that! This is nothing to laugh about.'

She stopped and shook her head. 'I'm sorry. It was just a thought that crossed my mind. You would laugh, too, if I told you. But no, perhaps you wouldn't; and, anyway, I won't.' Fishing out her handkerchief she blew her nose, and went on more calmly. 'You are quite right, my dear. I must try to forget past wrongs.'

'That's better. Then you'll have no cause for seeing Ratnadatta again, ever. You have no definite date with him, have you?'

'No; er . . . not exactly. He was going to let me know when he would take me to the Temple for my next step towards initiation. But he said that might not be for some time.'

'If he does, you must let me know, and I'll deal with him. But I want your solemn promise that you'll have nothing further to do with him or any other of these Satanists.'

She sighed, then gave him a wan smile. 'Very well. I'll give up the project I'd set my mind on. But... but say he comes here and tries to force me into going with him? Like all these people he can call to his aid supernatural power. I'm sure of that. Perhaps I won't be able to resist him.'

Barney thought for a moment, then he said: 'You were brought up as a Catholic, weren't you?'

'Yes.' She sighed again. 'But for a long time past I haven't been a practising one.'

'No matter. I'll bet you've still got a crucifix somewhere about the place.'

She nodded. 'Yes, I would never have parted with it.'

'All right, then. Keep it with you from now on. Carry it in your bag wherever you go. If Ratnadatta comes here, or waylays you in the street, produce it. I know little enough about this sort of thing, but I'm certain that the sight of a crucifix scares the pants off any Satanist. Hold it in front of his face, and tell him to get back to the Devil.'

'Oh Barney, what a comfort to me you are,' she murmured, throwing an arm about his neck. Their mouths met in their first really long, rich kiss. As it ended he picked her up, laid her on the sofa, knelt down beside her, and said:

'You are rewarding me for something I've not yet done. But you must know that I'm crazy about you, and I'd be crazier still if I refused to accept a little payment in advance.'

'It's not payment,' she breathed. 'It's just because I like you. I can't help it.'

Half an hour went by in what seemed to them only a few minutes; then the clock on the mantel-piece chimed twelve. Gently releasing herself from his embrace she said: 'Barney, you must go By modern standards no one seems to bother much about what goes on up to midnight; but if someone in the house saw you leaving my flat much after that they'd think the worst.'

Reluctantly he stood up, and grinned at her. 'I've never yet wanted less to say "goodnight" to anyone. But needs must, if it's a matter of your reputation.'

'When will I see you again?' she asked.

He thought for a moment, and mentally cursed the fact that on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings he was committed to Branch meetings which it would be neglecting his job to cut. 'I'm afraid not until Saturday. We might go to the Berkeley again. Anyhow I'll call for you, in a black tie, at half-past-seven.'

'Can't we meet before that?'

'I'm sorry, but for the next three evenings I've engagements I can't very well wriggle out of. But what about lunch? Are you free tomorrow?�

'No. I have to take part in a dress show at a big store down in Croydon. And I've another in the West End on Friday, which would put lunch out of the question. But Thursday would be all right.'

He shook his head. 'Stymied again. That's the one day I have to be out of London. I have to run down to Birmingham to interest some travel agents there in trips to Kenya.'

Inwardly she winced. That at such a moment he should have brought up again the Kenya background, which she felt certain was false, as an excuse not to give her lunch, affected her as badly as if he had hit her. She began to wonder how he meant to spend his evenings.

Quite unconscious that this cover for a visit he had arranged to pay to Dagenham, with two Communist officials who were going down to meet local Comrades there, had caused her such distress, Barney prepared to depart. That her 'goodnight' kiss was only lukewarm he put down to her being emotionally exhausted. With a cheerful admonition to keep her chin up and be looking her most beautiful when he called for her on Saturday evening, he left her and tiptoed down the stairs.

On the three evenings that followed he duly played his part at Branch meetings as a disgruntled worker out to seize on any pretext to make trouble. One of the pay-offs that he received from time to time as a result of this bellicose attitude came to him in a pub, while he was drinking there with some of his Communist contacts, just before closing time on the Friday night. Feeling that it was of sufficient importance to call for reporting without delay, he looked in at the office on Saturday morning.

After a short wait, Verney had him shown in, told him to sit down, and said: 'Well, young feller. Saturday's an unusual day for you to call. What's cooking?'

'I'm afraid that the C.G.T. election is going to be rigged, Sir,' he announced with a frown.

The Colonel gave him a sharp glance. 'Got any proof of that?' 'No; it's a tip I was given last night after a meeting in Hammersmith. One of my Red buddies had one over the odds and became confidential. He told me that if I wanted to make a bit of easy money I could do it by laying bets that Tom Ruddy would not top the poll for General Secretary. I played doubtful, but he swore he wouldn't let a pal like me down, and that it was a cert; only I must keep it under my hat and not get people talking by making bigger bets than a pound or two with any one person.'

'That's bad news, but interesting. It confirms a report I had yesterday. Jimmy Sawyer, who is on the same job up in Manchester as you are down here, telephoned me. He said he's sure there is something cooking, because some of the Commies up there are going round giving six to four that Ruddy won't get the job.'

'Perhaps it's just a propaganda stunt, and they think it worth risking some of their funds to impress waverers with their confidence in their own man.'

'Maybe. We can only hope that's all there is behind it.'

'If Ruddy's popularity with the rank and file goes for anything, they'll have to do an awful lot of rigging with the votes to keep him out.'

C.B. laid a finger alongside his big nose. 'That's not the only way they could keep him out, sonny.'

'No, they might stage a convenient "accident".'

'That's what I'm afraid of; so I'm going to get the Special Branch to offer him police protection. The trouble is that he's as tough as they come, and such an independent minded cuss, that I doubt if he'll accept it. He'll probably take the view that it's preferable to run any risk there may be rather than let his supporters think he no longer has the nerve to face rough meetings without a couple of plain-clothes men tagging round with him.

At that moment the buzzer on the Colonel's desk sounded. Switching on the inter-com. he said, 'Yes . . . All right; put him through.' Then he picked up the telephone receiver. 'Verney here. Morning, Dick. Have you rung up to let me know that your baby left last night for London?'

After listening for a full minute, he spoke again. 'I see. Damn the man! If he was going to give way at all, why the hell couldn't he do as he was asked and come up here where Special Branch have everything laid on to pinch the two of them? This is going to be very different and damnably difficult to make watertight. If L. gave us the slip and got away across the moors with the formula it would be nearly as bad as O. himself sneaking out of the country and joining the Reds. I don't think we dare risk letting them meet the way they plan to now. On the other hand, if we lay in wait and pulled L. in, unless he had already received the goods from O, we could hold him only temporarily on some minor charge. For all we know, too, he may even have a diplomatic passport and we'd have to let him go right away. In either case, he'd soon be able to agree another rendezvous with O., and if you failed to find out about it we'd be sunk. Hang on a minute. Let me think.'

There was a longish pause, then Verney went on. 'Look, Dick. You know I've every faith in you, but it wouldn't be fair to throw the whole responsibility for a thing like this on your shoulders. I shall come down myself this afternoon. When I've fixed things up this end I'll send you a signal what time to expect me.'

When he had hung up, he turned to Barney and said: 'As you will have guessed, that was Forsby. For the past few nights Lothar has been working on Otto till he's nearly driven him off his rocker. Thursday night's tape recording disclosed that he had given in and agreed to come up and meet Lothar in London today. When Forsby got that yesterday morning, he naturally expected Otto to give notification that he was going on weekend leave. He warned his boys to be ready to tail Otto and got a signal ready to send me the moment Otto left the Station. But Otto didn't leave; he sat tight. Forsby supposed that he had changed his mind and decided to dig his toes in again after all. But that wasn't the case. The explanation emerged from last night's tape recording.'

C.B. knocked his pipe out, and went on. 'Apparently Lothar came through on their psychic wave about four o'clock this morning. He was doing a check up to make sure that Otto did not mean to let him down and, when he found that Otto was still there in Wales, he threatened to put a curse on him that would kill him. Otto protested that he had meant to come but had been prevented at the last moment. When he had gone to the top boy at the Station, Sir Charles Remmington-Rudd, to tell him that he meant to go to London for the week-end, Sir Charles had said he could not let him. A signal had just come in to notify them that an American egg-head was flying down that afternoon to spend a couple of nights at the Station. The Yank is a fuel expert and, as Otto is our star fuel boffin, he had to be there to do the honours.'

'I get it,' Barney put in. 'Otto realized that he dared not ignore his boss's order to stay put, as if he had they would have tumbled to it that there was something fishy about his trip to London. There would have been a hue and cry after him. We should have been alerted to pick him up this end and have him tailed. He saw himself being pinched when he kept his appointment with Lothar and, as he would have had the fuel formula on him, both of them would have been for the high jump.'

'Precisely. That's what he told Lothar. Whether Lothar thought he was lying or not we don't know. Anyway, he made it plain that he was not prepared to wait much longer. He indicated that, since the mountain would not come to him, he meant to go to the mountain. He demanded that Otto should select some lonely spot a few miles outside the Station, which it would be easy for him to find, and that he should meet him there with the formula on Sunday afternoon. Otto gave him as a rendezvous a place called Lone Tree Hill, and described its situation. Lothar said that he would be there sometime between two o'clock and four, and that Otto was to go there dressed in an old raincoat and beret, so that he would be easily recognizable from a distance. He added that, if Otto failed to turn up, or betrayed him afterwards, he would be dead in nine days. And that is that.'

Barney nodded. 'I don't wonder you are worried, Sir. It's going to be a tricky business to draw a cordon round an exposed hill-top without Lothar spotting what you are up to.'

'I know; but I may decide to intervene before they meet. Anyway, it's no good trying to settle on a plan before we've talked the whole thing over with Forsby.'

'We!' Barney echoed.

'Yes. As this business ties up with your Satanist Circle at Cremorne I'm taking you with me. I'm still hoping to be able to pull in and grill both these birds. If I can, something may emerge from what they say that will give you further light on this Indian you are after. The Research Experimental Station is right off the map; but it's got its own airstrip, so we can fly down. I believe they've got some sort of hook-up with Farnborough. I'll have my P.A. find out. Anyway, we'd better have a fairly early lunch and start immediately afterwards. Off you go now. Pack a bag and meet me at the Rag at a quarter to one.'

Barney did not argue. Annoyed as he was at having to cancel his plans for the evening, this was a matter of duty and his Chief had given him an order. He said only, 'Very good, Sir. See you at your Club at twelve-forty-five,' then left the room, went down in the lift, got a taxi and had himself driven to Warwick Square.

Having let himself into his flat he at once tried to telephone Mary, but there was no reply. As she was evidently out and might not return till lunch time, he rang up Constance Spry's, ordered a big bunch of roses to be sent to her by hand, and dictated a card to go with them. When he had finished packing, he wrote her a note saying how disappointed he was that he would not be seeing her over the week-end, but that he expected to be back on Monday and, unless he telephoned her to the contrary, would she please forgive him and go out with him that evening.

As they had agreed that, in the event of any trouble, she should ring him up, and she had not done so, he had no particular cause to be worried about her. On the way up to Pall Mall he posted his letter, then gave his mind to speculating on the strange business that was taking him down to Wales.

The roses were delivered to Mary some ten minutes after she got back from her week-end shopping. As she took them from their cellophane covering she was delighted but, when she read the card that accompanied them, her face fell sadly. It was in a young woman's rounded hand, so obviously not even written by Barney, and it said only, 'Terribly sorry to have to put you off tonight, but have to be out of London on urgent business over week-end. Love, B.'

She felt it to be the most shocking let down. For a moment she was near bursting into tears; but, swiftly, her self-pity was overcome by angry resentment. Like a fool - like a sentimental ninny -like some little teenager who had hooked her first beau - for the past three and a half days she had been almost counting the moments until she should see Barney again. She knew that he had no right to a title, felt certain that the Kenya story was a myth, and all he said about starting up a travel agency there a pack of lies; yet, even so, she had allowed him to sell himself to her again. Those merry brown eyes, the mop of thick dark curly hair, the spontaneous grin that so frequently lit up his brown, healthy face, had bewitched her into believing that he had become a different person from the man she had known five years before. He had played on her loneliness by giving her the only good times she had known since her husband's death, and played on her fears by insisting that she needed his protection.

Looking back over the days since she had given him supper for the first time in her flat, she thought that she must have been out of her wits to accept without question his glib assertions that for eight out often evenings he had had long-standing engagements to dine with old friends. He had even left her on that excuse, after taking her down to Wisley the previous Sunday. To support himself he must have some sort of job, but no normal job entailed a man's having to leave London for the week-end at a moment's notice on a Saturday morning. The explanation was clear. He must have a mistress and quite probably was amusing himself with several other women. No doubt he had had a date with one of them on Sunday evening, and now quite unexpectedly one of them had let him know that morning that she was free to slip off for a week-end in the country with him. He had not changed by an iota, but was still the self-indulgent cynic who took his fun where he could find it and, for any woman who was not with him at the moment, it was a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'.