The Satanist

'Brothers of the Ram. You are all wise to it that to-night we have a very special assignment to carry out for the furtherance of Our Lord Satan's work. To bless and guide our efforts His Mightiness the Great Ram has come among us. To him Prince Lucifer has delegated the greatest power in His realm the Earth. To have him with us, folks, is an outstanding honour. Presently he'll grant you 'most anything you ask, and far more than I could do, as a sorta blank cheque against any risks you may run of meeting trouble later. But first he's graciously agreed to initiate two neophytes: warlock Doctor Dee, and witch Circe. Now we'll make a start with the usual drill. Give me fog music.'

The men with the saxophone and the accordion began to play. The notes they drew from their instruments were unlike anything that Mary had ever heard before. It was a strange tuneless wailing that had something sad about it but without rhythm or form. While this cacophony of sound continued Wash remained motionless in front of the altar, his eyes cast down, his face rigid with concentration.

Within a few moments the spell began to work. A deeper gloom shrouded the irregular piles of ruins outside the chapel, wisps of white mist drifted across its open end, and soon these thickened until they formed a solid impenetrable curtain.

Wash released his breath in a long loud sigh, then ordered, 'Give me music to turn on the heat.'

The players broke off and, after a moment, started a quite different arrangement of sounds. Again they were tuneless and apparently uncoordinated, but the movement was quicker and gayer. Again Wash stood unmoving as he concentrated on creating a change in the temperature. The May night was not cold, but on the previous day heavy rain had saturated the weeds and bushes that formed a miniature jungle between the ivy-covered mounds of the ancient ruin, leaving it dank and chill. Now, with surprising swiftness, the faint mist that had permeated the interior of the little chapel disappeared, and its atmosphere became as warm as that of a garden on a sunny day in June.

Mary was hardly conscious of these changes. Grateful for the support of the Crusader's tomb she stood partly leaning back against it, her eyes riveted on Barney. Still not remotely suspicious of the horrible death that had been planned for him, he was standing in an easy attitude facing Wash, but now and then giving a covert glance about him.

Once he smiled at Mary, but she was too distraught to respond; so he assumed that she was still furious with him, and he did not look in her direction again. Had she not been masked the agonized expression on her face as she stared at him might at least have conveyed a hint that for some reason she was apprehensive on his account; but after the way they had blackguarded one another at the Cedars, he could only suppose that until he could have a quiet talk with her alone there was no hope of healing the breach between them.

Wash bowed to Lothar, then they changed places so that the former now stood on the right of the altar and the latter in front of it. As they moved, Mary instinctively turned her gaze from Barney to them. Both made imposing figures. Wash, with the Cleopatra style diadem and rearing cobra set upon his thick near-white hair, his great hook nose, and huge body draped in the white satin robe decorated with the entwined black snakes, resembled some fabulous Aztec Emperor. Yet, for all his height and massive bulk, he did not steal the picture from Lothar. Slim, erect, his deeply cleft chin jutting out, and his cruel, beautifully modelled mouth hard set beneath the great horned mask that now concealed the upper part of his face, the Great Ram positively radiated power. It seemed to pulsate from him in waves that could be felt, and without question he was the dominant personality in the assembly. Suddenly, in his harsh, slightly nasal voice, he spoke.

'My children! As your High Priest Twisting Snake has told you, we have a great work to perform for Our Lord Satan to-night. To some of you it may appear to involve risk of arrest and imprisonment. Have no fears. Prince Lucifer always looks after his own. Ways will be found to protect you, or more than compensate you later for any temporary unpleasantness you may have to undergo.'

He paused for a moment, the tip of his tongue passed slowly over his red lips, then he went on. 'Before we set out on our important mission, I shall grant all your reasonable requests. Later I intend to perform a ceremony of initiation. The neophyte Circe is to be received among us as a Sister. She is of unusual beauty; so no doubt most of you will wish to perform with her the Sacred Rite of Creation when she offers herself for Temple Service.'

As he paused again Mary choked back a sob of dread and Barney, the blood now drained from his face, clenched his fists until his nails dug deep into his palms. Surrounded, as he was, by fourteen strong men, he knew that he had not the faintest chance of saving her from this devastating physical assault. He could only pray that he would by some means be spared from witnessing it, and might be granted the small satisfaction within the next twelve hours of bringing about the arrest of the whole unholy crew so that justice might be done upon them.

Again the Great Ram's cold, sneering voice broke the deadly silence that reigned in the little chapel. 'As you all know, for the ceremony of initiation blood is required. Normally it is the blood obtained from a sacrifice. To that there is only one alternative. By a special dispensation Our Lord Satan has granted me the power to use one drop of blood from my own veins for this purpose. But to-night I shall not need to open one of my veins. There is a traitor among us! A spy!

Suddenly his left hand shot out and he pointed at Barney. 'There he stands! Seize him! I decree that here and now he shall serve as a sacrifice.'

It was evident that Wash had warned the group of men who had met him under the trees to be prepared for this denunciation. The very instant that Lothar's accusing finger stabbed the air, as though at a signal the two cowled figures nearest Barney leapt towards him. He had no time to turn, let alone run. The attack was so sudden that he had hardly raised his arms to defend himself before they were seized. Next moment he was struggling between the two men and making desperate efforts to free himself from them.

Now that the dreaded crisis was actually upon her Mary was utterly distraught. To the last she had hoped for the miracle for which she had been praying so frantically - some benighted stranger stumbling on the scene and causing a diversion, a fall of the remainder of the chapel roof, a sudden heart attack that would lay the Great Ram low, lightning directed at his evil heart, a thunderbolt, an angel with a flaming sword - but no intervention, human or divine, had occurred to prevent the Satanists carrying through their terrible purpose.

Bitterly she upbraided herself for not having shouted a warning to Barney as he walked past the car in which Wash had left her, or as she had come through the ruin to the chapel. That she had not was partly due to fears for herself aroused by Wash's threats of what the Great Ram might do to her. But only partly. It was more that at no point had it seemed possible to her that he could have got away. Yet he was strong, resourceful and swift of foot; so he might have. And now it was too late.

Tears welled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks beneath the mask. Her hands were damp, her hair matted on her forehead. The struggle in the middle of the temple had as yet only lasted a few moments, but there could be no question about how it would end. Even if Barney could wrench his arms from the grip of the two men who held them, there were ten others between him and the open end of the chapel. Within a matter of minutes it was certain that he would be overcome. Then they would rig up some form of crucifix, tie him to it upside down and cut his throat - just as the Satanists at Cremorne had cut Teddy's.

She could shut her eyes but that would not prevent her seeing with her mind all that was happening step by hideous step. And the awful sound of his cries as they butchered him would ring in her ears to torture her to the end of her days.

A wave of faintness swept over her. She swayed slightly and her knees began to give. Instinctively she thrust her hands behind her to keep herself from falling by supporting herself on the Crusader's tomb. One of them descended on her handbag. She had carried it from the car under her arm then put it down there behind her.

In an instant she had grasped the bag and once more stood erect. With frantic fingers she tore it open and plunged her right hand into it. Ever since she had left the Temple at Cremorne with Wash the crucifix had remained in it, but in a side pocket and forgotten by her.

To produce it, she knew, would mean a hideous death for herself. But by its power she might save Barney. His bitter angry words 'Once a whore always a whore' came back to her. From the moment of the abrupt interruption of their furious quarrel she had felt certain that even if they both got away from the Satanists he would henceforth always despise her. Yet she loved him. She knew now that he was the only man in her life that she had ever really loved or ever would love. Had some other man been in his present extremity, however great her urge to help him, fear for herself would have restrained her. She would have stood by until mounting anguish proved too much for her and she fainted. But it was Barney who was to die. No matter what happened she must play, in an attempt to save him, this last card that the Powers of Good had thrust into her hand.

These thoughts coursed through her brain with the speed of lightning. The Great Ram was still standing at the foot of the altar steps, side face on to her and no more than six feet away. Pulling the crucifix from the bag she threw it with all her force at his face.

It hit him on the chin. As it struck him there came a blinding flash. He uttered a piercing shriek and fell backwards against the altar. His great ram's head mask was knocked off and rolled across the floor. For an instant the chapel and the ruins outside it were as bright as though lit by brilliant sunshine. Next second all other sounds were drowned in a crash of thunder. The floor of the chapel rocked, a part of the roof fell in. The flames of the black candles flickered wildly then went out, plunging the whole scene in darkness.

For several minutes pandemonium reigned. Shouts and curses rent the air mingled with the sounds of groans and trampling feet. Then the beam of an electric torch stabbed the blackness. Another and another appeared, until five beams were sweeping to and fro, revealing the wild disorder into which the Satanists had been thrown.

Lothar, apparently still dazed, was hunched on the altar steps nursing his burnt chin in his hands. Wash was bending over him. Two of the congregation were cowering in a corner; another, having been kneed in the groin by Barney, lay writhing in the middle of the chapel floor. Barney, to Mary's unutterable relief, had disappeared. Three more of the Satanists were missing, having either gone in pursuit of him or, being overcome by panic, fled into the night.

Mary needed no telling that she would have to pay for her success, and she made no resistance when two of the hooded men ran up to her, seized her by the arms, and hustled her forward towards the Great Ram. For a moment he stared up at her with lack-lustre eyes, then comprehension and hate dawned in them.

Extending a hand to Wash he said thickly, 'Help me up.' Then when Wash had got him to his feet he went on, his words still laboured but pregnant with menace. 'Give me a moment. I must

t think. I will not kill her. Death is too good; too easy. I must think - think of a curse. A curse to bring her living death. I have it. I'll destroy her mind; turn her into a Zombie. No; no, I won't. Here they would put her into an asylum and idiots can be quite happy when given enough food and the barest comfort. I'll mar her beauty - teeth, eyes, hair - and cause her lingering agony from the gradual rotting of her bones.'

Mary faced him, her eyes distended, her mouth suddenly gone dry from horror. She had expected death, but no sentence so terrible as this. Yet she knew that even if she flung herself at his feet and grovelled there, she could expect no mercy from him.

There was a moment of dead silence. Even the lesser Satanists who had crowded round were awed by the thought of a once beautiful woman, toothless, hairless, pur-blind, dragging herself about while her bones were being slowly and painfully eaten away by a curse that would take the form of third degree syphilis.

The silence was broken by Wash, who said in a harsh voice, 'She's asked for everything that's coming to her, Master. But in this place we're all washed up now. That accursed crucifix is laying somewhere around. None of us dare touch it and the vibrations it gives off would stymie any magic attempted here.'

'You are wrong.' The Great Ram spoke tonelessly but with authority, 'When it... it came in contact with me it burnt itself out. There is now no more power vested in it than in any other pieces of wood and ivory. Have the candles re-lit so that I may put my curse upon this woman.'

Several of the Satanists made a move to obey, but Wash called sharply, 'Hold it, folks; I've first a word to say.' Then he turned back to Lothar. 'To-night, Chief, we've work to do: Our Lord Satan's work, and a top-ranking mission at that. You don't need me to tell you that laying curses drains power from even the strongest of us, and within an hour you may need all yours to pull us out should we come up against some snags. Leave this crazy bitch to me. I'll deal with her later.'

'No, I mean to curse her here and now,' Lothar replied doggedly. 'I am no little High Priest but the Great Ram; and under Prince Lucifer my power is inexhaustible.'

'Sure, sure; no question about that.' Wash's tone was soothing but suddenly it changed to a sharper note. 'When you're yourself. But at this point you're not. You're as groggy as a brand-new battle-shock case. I've seen plenty and I know. So temporarily I'm taking charge here, and we're all quitting this place right now.'

Amazement dawned in the Great Ram's heavy-lidded blue eyes, then anger, and he exclaimed, 'How dare you! No one gives orders in my presence.'

'Maybe it's unusual; but it's just that I mean to do.'

'Defy me at your peril. Remember there is always a to-morrow. At my leisure I could break you as easily as I could a reed.'

'I know it, Exalted One, and I'm not such a fool as to defy you. But I want you to give me my way. To get it I'll make a bargain with you.'

'I do not make bargains with my inferiors.'

'If you don't make this one we'll all go up in smoke, for having mucked the deal between us - you for playing unreasonable in refusing to delay your curse, me for having dug my toes in on that account.'

Wash reached out an enormous hand, clutched a handful of Mary's hair, jerked her head roughly from side to side, and went on. 'This woman is mine. For as long as I want her she's to remain intact: hair, sight, hearing, toenails and all that goes on inside her. When I'm through with her you can lay your curse, but not before. You'll either agree to that or to-night's assignment is off. I'll walk out on you.'

Still sweating with fear, Mary waited for the Great Ram's reaction. Had he not been so shaken she felt certain that his hard, imperious, overbearing nature would have forced him to reject any compromise; but temporarily he had become like some great capital ship that had suffered a devastating air attack in which bombs had put all her barbetts out of action, so that she was heaving half awash in the sea, and capable now of using only the fire power of her minor armament.

After a moment of excruciating suspense his answer came. With a sneer he said, 'The chains of the body must still be heavy on you to play such high stakes for any woman. But this is no time for us to quarrel. Let it be as you wish. Providing she does not escape the penalty for her sacrilegious act, a few weeks or months are of little importance. Anticipation of what is in store for her may even prove a refinement of her punishment. But you must inform me when you have tired of her.'

'I'll do that,' Wash agreed. Then, raising his voice, he turned to the others. 'Get moving, now! Two of you give a hand to the Master, here. The rest of you beat it back to the transport. And make it snappy. When you hit the base you know what to do.'

The fog still hung thick outside the chapel. It was that which had enabled Barney to get clean away. Wash did not delay to practise a magic which would have dispersed it, as the men of his coven were all so familiar with the ruins of the Abbey and the wood beyond that with their torches they could quite well find their way through them.

Except for the two who had come forward to support Lothar, they hurried off and were swiftly swallowed up in the greyish darkness. The Great Ram refused the aid of the two men who remained, but accepted their guidance and, with one of them carrying his head-dress, while the other shone a torch, they set off along the now trampled path through the sea of weeds that carpeted the ground between the mounds of stone. Wash, grasping Mary firmly by the arm, brought up the rear.

On reaching the far side of the wood they emerged abruptly from the belt of fog just in time to see three cars, which had been hidden among the trees, carry away the other members of the Brotherhood, all of whom had removed the monks' robes that had concealed their uniforms. Wash ordered the two men who were escorting the Great Ram to take his robe and put it with his mask in the boot of his car, then follow with it. Lothar himself he installed in the front passenger seat of his own car, while Mary squeezed herself into the back among the pile of luggage. Having put his head-dress and robe into the boot, Wash came round to the driver's seat and a minute later they were bumping their way back along the track to the road.

The drive lasted for some fifteen minutes during which, for the first time in what seemed many hours, but actually was little more than one, Mary breathed freely again. She had saved her dear Barney and had herself been spared the gruelling infliction of initiation. Lothar's threat to reduce her to a ghoulish physical wreck remained. But Wash had saved her from that, at least for the time being; and she had an optimistic feeling that, now he had so clearly shown that he had fallen in love with her, somehow he would manage to ensure that she escaped the Great Ram's vengeance.

She had heard Wash tell his men to return to the base, but had not realized that they too were on their way there until the car slowed down and, at a loud challenge, drew up. A sentry and a military policeman came forward. Wash gave the countersign, the two men saluted and the great wire gates were opened. They drove through them and on for a quarter of a mile between clusters of buildings, to pull up beside a hangar that faced on to the airfield. The three of them got out and Wash led them into it.

Inside there stood a small passenger aircraft that several men were preparing for flight. Its engines began to tick over and the hangar doors were opened. For a few moments they stood beside it. The luggage was brought in from the car and carried up the movable staircase into it. Lothar turned to Wash and asked,

'Has the thing I've come for been loaded into her yet?'

Wash nodded. 'My boys saw to that this afternoon. It's in a big case and stowed in the tail. Go up and satisfy yourself it's there if you wish.'

Without a word Lothar left them, walked up the steps and disappeared into the aircraft. That gave Mary the first chance she had had to thank Wash, without risk of being overheard, for saving her from being cursed. In a spate of words she began to do so.

Angrily he cut her short. 'You sure must have been round the bend to do what you did. And later there'll be no side-stepping for you from paying for it. All you've got to thank me for is a reprieve. Best make your mind up to get all you can outa life while your health is left to you.'

A junior officer came up, saluted and reported, 'All set to get moving, Sir.'

Wash acknowledged the salute and, as the officer turned away, led Mary towards the boarding steps. In sudden apprehension she exclaimed, 'Are we going too? I saw your luggage going up but I haven't got my wits back yet. I didn't realize...'

'Yeah, we're going too. Your suitcase is on board.' He thrust her before him up the steep steps.

'But where?' she cried with rising panic, as he forced her on in front of him. 'Where are you taking me?�

'To Russia,' he answered tersely, 'and we're not coming back.'

CHAPTER XXIII THE TERRIBLE DEDUCTION

When Barney had been seized in the chapel he had instinctively fought back, but the odds assembled there against him were so overwhelming that he knew his struggles to be hopeless. With the Great Ram's denunciation ringing in his ears he knew, too, that his life was not worth a quarter-of-an-hour's purchase.

Then, as he was facing the altar while swaying wildly between his two antagonists, he had seen Mary throw the crucifix. The blinding flash, thunderous crash and heaving of the floor that followed had stricken all the Satanists with instant terror. The one holding on to Barney's left arm let go. Swinging round he had kneed in the groin the other man who was clinging to him, and wrenched his right arm free. The rest of them, by stepping forward, could have barred his path to the open end of the chapel; but it had been plunged into darkness and they had been thrown into a panic. He cannoned into one and brushed by another; next moment he was out in the body of the Abbey and running for his life.

It was a nightmare dash, for out there fog combined with the darkness to prevent his seeing where he was going. Several times he ran slap into sections of wall and twice tripped to fall at full length among the weeds and brambles. Yet it was that spell-induced fog that saved him from determined pursuit and recapture.

After four or five minutes of staggering blindly about, he got clear of the ruin and could vaguely make out the trunks of big trees as he ran on now dodging between them. Another five minutes and both the wood and the fog-belt ended. He had no idea of the direction he had taken but there was no sign of a track or the cars in which the Satanists had arrived, and as far as he could see ahead of him lay only a ploughed field.

Pulling up on the edge of it, he stood gasping for breath and striving to collect his thoughts. He owed his life to Mary; he had no doubt about that. But what about her? Unless she too had got away in the darkness and confusion they would inflict a terrible vengeance on her. She was no fool; she must have known the sort of penalty she would have to pay for throwing a crucifix in the Great Ram's face. That meant that, despite the bitter abuse she had hurled at him not much over an hour ago, deep down she must love him. Courageous men and women will take great risks to rescue children, and often complete strangers, from fire or drowning, but they do not voluntarily invite a terrible death for themselves in order to save the life of someone they hate. And after what had passed between them there could be no halfway house. If she did not hate him, then she loved him. At the thought that she must almost certainly still be in the clutches of the Satanists, he groaned aloud.

As his breathing eased a little, he swung round to plunge back into the wood. But he had taken only a few steps before he pulled up. The ruined Abbey must be anything between a quarter and half a mile away. In the fog and darkness nothing but a fluke could lead him back to it direct, and he might wander about in the wood for an hour or more without finding it.

Besides, when he did, what was he going to do? His gun had been taken from him by one of the American's coloured boys. He had intended to ask for it back after supper; but Lothar's arrival had precipitated a series of events which had denied him the chance to do so. Even if Lothar had been rendered hors de combat by the blaze as the crucifix hit his face, there was still the giant American and the dozen men who made up his coven. Barney was far from being a coward and he had the greatest difficulty in resisting the urge to make an immediate attempt to rescue Mary; but he knew that on his own he could not possibly succeed.

He groaned again, leant against a tree and, covering his face with his hands, endeavoured to make up his mind about the best course to take. To bring the police on the scene was the obvious answer; but how could that be done most quickly? After a moment he decided that the best bet would be to get hold of one of the Satanists' cars and drive in to Cambridge. Even if he could have found a house with a telephone fairly quickly, it might prove difficult to convince the police that he really needed the help of at least a dozen of them, and urgently; whereas if he went to a police station he had only to show his official pass to secure immediate assistance.

At a run he set off along the edge of the trees, but he had completely lost his bearings and actually was on the far side of the wood from the track along which the cars had come to it. After he had been running for several minutes, the wood ended in a right angle. Turning the corner he ran on, only to find that this side of the wood seemed longer than that on which he had come out; but having covered some distance along it he struck a path. To the right it led into the fog-shrouded wood, to the left to a cottage some hundred yards away, of which against the paler sky he could just make out the chimney and the roof line.

Realizing now that he must have come out on the opposite side of the wood from the cars, and might yet have to run a long way to reach them, he decided to find out if the cottage had a telephone. Two minutes later he was hammering loudly on its door, and shouting, 'Wake up there! Wake up!'

In response to his shouts a tousled head was thrust out of an upper window. Without waiting to be questioned or abused he cried, 'I'm a policeman. This is urgent. It's a matter of murder. Have you a telephone?�

'No, I haven't,' angrily replied the man at the window; then, as the reason for his having been aroused from his sleep sunk in, he added, 'Sorry I can't help. But there's one at the vicarage. Turn left and straight up the road. It's just past the church; you can't miss it.'

With a murmur of thanks Barney, still panting, dashed down the garden path to the lane on which the cottage faced, and up the road. After another gruelling run, now gasping for breath and sweating profusely, he reached the vicarage. The same tactics there led, after a few moments, to the front door being opened by a tall, middle-aged man in a dressing-gown, who said he was the vicar.

Using 'murder' again as the best means of getting swift action, Barney was led to the telephone and induced the desk-sergeant at the Cambridge police headquarters to put him through to the night-duty Inspector. To have mentioned Black Magic might have aroused scepticism; so Barney gave the code name by which his office was known to the police, and said that he was on the trail of a wanted enemy agent who was a known killer. Even so he had the greatest difficulty in persuading the Inspector to send more than one police car and also come out himself with a strong force of constables.

The vicar, his eyes on stalks as he listened, supplied the name of his village, which lay just over the crest of the hill; but this produced a new snag, as it was well across the county border, in the north-western corner of Essex. All Barney's persuasive powers were needed to induce the Inspector to cut red tape and enter another county but, by promising to take the responsibility if there was any trouble, he succeeded.

At Barney's request the vicar produced a map of the district. From it he quickly memorized the way to get back on to the other road from which the track led to the ruined Abbey; then he gratefully accepted the vicar's offer of a whisky and soda.

Twenty minutes later the Inspector arrived with three car-loads of police. Barney was waiting for them on the doorstep. Hastily thanking the vicar he showed the Inspector his special identity card, told him the direction to take and got into the back of his car. While they drove the better part of two miles along roads that went round the wood, he gave the Inspector the bare facts of the situation, then they bumped up the track to the place where the Satanists had left their cars.

The cars were no longer there but the sight of their fresh tracks, thrown up in the headlights of the police cars, dissipated the Inspector's suspicions that Barney was suffering from overstrain and had brought him out on a wild-goose chase. The wood was still dank and eerily silent, apart from the constant dripping from the trees; but the fog had cleared a little and they made their way as quickly as they could towards the Abbey.

As they approached it, Barney's fear that they would find Mary there, but dead and mutilated, was so great that his throat contracted till he thought he was going to choke; and when they came in sight of the chapel, as the police shone their torches into it, he had to make a great effort in order to force himself to keep his eyes in that direction.

No twisted body lay sprawled there, but his fears were hardly lessened until he had run forward and looked at the altar. Upon it there was no trace of newly-spilled blood. Only then was he able to hope that by some means Mary had succeeded in escaping the Great Ram's vengeance, temporarily at least. But, owing to her position in the chapel at the time she had wrecked the proceedings, he thought it most unlikely that she had got away; and he knew that as a result of her act every moment that she remained in the hands of the Satanists her life must be in danger.

In consequence, before the police had had a chance to do more than take a first look at the big black candles, he hurried them back to the cars and gave the Inspector directions on how to reach the Cedars. Another quarter of an hour sped by while the cars made their dash back into Cambridgeshire. They screamed their way through Fulgoham village then, as they reached the place where Barney had parked his own car some two hours earlier, he had them flagged down to a halt.

They all got out and the Inspector gave swift directions to his men to surround the house so that nobody could get away from it. He allowed five minutes for the men to take up their positions, then he and Barney walked up to the front door. Their ringing, after some minutes, brought Jim down to it. Barney said,

'You remember me. Your friend Iziah got the wrong idea and slugged me, but later I had supper with the Colonel. I've come back to talk to him again.'

Jim's eyes grew round. 'But he's not here, Boss. He left with you. He's gone off on leave, an' we're not looking to see him back for a fortnight. Didn't he tell you?'

Barney's hopes of catching the American and rescuing Mary were dashed, but he asked quickly. 'Where has he gone?�

'I wouldn't know, Boss,' came the obviously truthful reply. 'The Colonel don't go tell us boys how he's planning to spend his time.'

'All right,' Barney snapped. 'Perhaps I can find out by running over the house.'

The Inspector drew him aside and whispered, 'We haven't got a search warrant.'

'To hell with that!' retorted Barney. 'Stay outside if you like. I'm going in.' Fixing the coloured boy with a basilisk stare, he said to him, 'Go and get my gun. You'll find me in the sitting-room.'

Seeing that Barney was accompanied by a police inspector and that other policemen were standing about in the offing, Jim offered no opposition. Marching inside, Barney went straight to the telephone and got through to his office. He told the night-duty officer to ring the Chief and inform him that Sullivan had contacted Lothar Khune at a house near Fulgoham, in Cambridgeshire, in company with Mrs. Morden and an American Air Force Colonel named Henrick G. Washington, but had lost them and now had reason to believe that the trio were on their way to London.

He then helped himself to a whisky and soda and rang the bell. Jim appeared holding the little automatic. Barney took it, slipped it in his pocket and spent five minutes firing questions at him. But none of Jim's replies threw any light on whither his master might be bound. Barney sent for the other two boys, but his questions to them proved equally unrewarding.

He then spent half an hour going over the house. The sight of the black satin sheets on the bed in the principal bedroom aroused in him mingled feelings of nausea and homicidal jealousy, but he steeled himself to go through the drawers and cupboards. Neither there, in the sitting-room, nor anywhere else in the house did he discover any evidence which would have connected Colonel Washington with Satanist activities, and clearly his coloured servants regarded him as a quick-tempered, but generous, cheerful and entirely normal master.

Rejoining the Inspector, who all this time had been glumly waiting outside, Barney arranged for him to have the house kept under observation, on the off-chance that Lothar, or the Colonel,

might return to it; then he collected his own car and accompanied the police cars back to Cambridge. On their arrival in the city the Inspector knocked up an hotel for Barney and, feeling that there was nothing more that he could do for the time being, he took a room in it.

By then it was close on three in the morning, and he had had a twenty-hour day, the last eight hours of which had been filled with constant strain and endeavour. Yet, tired as he was, he did not manage to get to sleep for over an hour after he had got into bed, because he was still so agitated about what might be happening to Mary.

He had left a call for seven o'clock. By a little after eight he was on his way to London, and well before ten he was in the office of C.B.'s P.A., declaring that he must see the Chief urgently as soon as he arrived.

'He's already here,' the P.A. replied with a slightly sour grimace. 'He has been here half the night, and wrecked my Sunday by calling me up at eight o'clock to report for duty. But he is expecting you, so you can go right in.'

C.B. was seated at his desk, but for once there were no papers upon it; apart from a used coffee cup it was empty. As Barney entered Verney turned his head and asked quickly, 'Any news of the Great Ram?'

'News?' Barney repeated. 'Not since I telephoned. I was hoping that the police had picked him up.'

'No, you were wrong about his being on his way to London. I had Scotland Yard lay on everything they'd got, but to no purpose. My bet is now that he has again left England by air.'

'What makes you think that, Sir?' Barney asked with nervous sharpness.

Verney gave a wry grin. 'If you've got a flask on you, you'd better take a pull from it. About one o'clock this morning your new pal, Colonel Henrick G. Washington, left his base in an aircraft. With him he took a little souvenir. Can you guess what it was?'

'Not...' Barney's eyes widened,'... not an H bomb?' 'You've hit it, chum; or near as makes no difference. Actually it was one of the latest pattern U.S. nuclear warheads.' 'And Lothar went with him?' 'Everything points to that.'

'But Mary! Mary!' Barney's voice was an anguished cry. 'What have they done with her?'

C.B. spread out his long hands. 'I can guess how you must be feeling, and I'd give a lot to be able to tell you that she is safe and well. As things are I think that you can take it that she is still alive. They went straight from the Abbey to the air base; so if they had killed her it is pretty certain that by now someone would have found her body. Unless she got away and is wandering, temporarily out of her mind, that leaves only one alternative. It is that they took her with them.'

Suddenly sitting down Barney began to hammer his clenched fists together. 'Oh God!' he moaned. 'Oh God, this is too ghastly! If only I'd gone direct to the air base. Earlier I was speculating on what Lothar was up to down there, and it occurred to me that he was probably planning to snatch some major secret from the Americans. But later, well, later ...'

'Easy on, young feller, easy on. You'd had a packet yourself, and I'll not hold it against you that your thoughts were on the girl.'

'But if I'd gone to the air base I might have wrecked their plan, bagged Lothar, and rescued Mary.'

'No; you couldn't have done that. You were lost, you had no transport, and after you got away from the ruined Abbey over half an hour elapsed before you were able to communicate with the police. Even if you had directed them straight on to the air base, by the time they arrived and had explained matters to the Security people there it would have been too late. Colonel Washington's aircraft would already have taken off.'

Barney looked up in surprise. 'When I telephoned the office, I gave only the bare facts about my having got on to Lothar. I said nothing about the Abbey and the hellish business that took place there. How did you know...'

Smiling slightly, C.B. replied. 'Otto had a vision, and knocked me up in the middle of the night. I've since had a long report from the Cambridge police, and another from the U.S. Security people. Between them I've managed to form a pretty good picture of what happened. But of course there are gaps in it; and I'd like you now to give me a detailed account of your activities from the time you left Inspector Thompson after having a drink with him at The World's End.'

With an effort Barney dragged his thoughts away from Mary and for ten minutes made, in jerky staccato sentences, his report about his encounter with Ratnadatta and all that had followed.

When he had done, C.B. said, 'That clears up quite a lot of points. Now I'll give you my side of it. A little before two o'clock the Office called me and relayed your message. When I learned that you had actually contacted Lothar and believed him to be on his way to London I naturally went all out to get him. I not only alerted Special Branch, but got the Chief Constables of all the Home Counties out of bed to lay on networks in case he made for some hideout on the East or South coasts. After half an hour I'd done all I could so, having told the Office to call me if they got him, I put out the light and went to sleep again.

'About an hour later my step-son roused me out. Otto had woken him by hammering on the front door. I had Otto in and this is what he had to say. Round about midnight he was awakened by a violent blow on the chin. He says it was as though a flaming torch had been thrust into his face. Instantly he became identified with Lothar and, I suppose one can say, inside his mind.'

'He saw as clearly as though in strong sunshine, a chapel in the ruined Abbey to which you had been taken, and you struggling in the grip of two hooded men. He was aware that Mary Morden was there and that it was she who had inflicted this grievous injury upon him. Although within seconds everything went black, he knew that you had got away, but at the moment his mind was obsessed with his desire to be revenged on Mary. Some of the Satanists produced torches and he rallied his strength to put a terrible curse upon her. But Colonel Washington intervened and threatened to rat on him unless he postponed taking any action against her.'

'So that's what happened.' Barney let out a swift sigh. His relief for Mary was faintly tinged with jealousy at the thought that it was the American instead of himself who had succeeded in protecting her; but he added quickly, 'And what then? Did they go straight to the air base?�

'I gather so. Otto's chin was paining him severely; so he got out of bed and bathed it. As the injury was a form of burn, that made matters worse rather than better, and for a time he lost touch with the situation. He says that when he picked it up again he seemed to be poised above a dark wood that was filled with fog; but he could see through the fog. He saw Lothar and the others making their way to several cars on the edge of the wood, then get into them and drive off. He saw you, too, on the other side of the wood, stumbling about in it, and obviously lost.'

'Then, instead of getting on the telephone to me at once, the fool swallowed five or six aspirins to dull his pain, and got back into bed again. As he lay there he picked up Lothar in a car with Colonel Washington and Mary Morden. The car was approaching the air base, but soon after they had entered it the aspirins began to work and he dozed off. About three o'clock he woke, thought over his vision and decided that he ought not to wait until the morning to tell me about it; so he got up, dressed and came round to Dovehouse Street.

'As soon as I had heard Otto's story I felt sure that you were on the wrong scent about their being on their way to London. What is more, in view of the last coup Lothar pulled off, the idea that he had been taken into a United States air base by an Air Force Colonel who was another Satanist properly put the wind up me.

I telephoned a warning to the base and asked that Colonel Washington and anyone with him should be put under preventive arrest. Then I hurried into my clothes, came up to the Office and gave the whole story over the scrambler line to H.Q. Strategic Air Command at Lakenheath in Suffolk.

'Half an hour later they came back to me to say that we'd missed the boat. Apparently Washington is a real rough diamond, but he was an ace flyer in the war, and stayed on in the Air Force afterwards only because he is mad-keen on flying. He has stacks of money and in addition to living like a prince in this house, the Cedars, outside the base with a team of imported coloured boys to look after him, he has his own private six-seater aircraft that he flies himself whenever he goes on leave to the Continent. He had applied for leave in the regular way and been given a fortnight. His 'plane is fitted with equipment for night flying; so no one thought it particularly strange that he should elect to take off at one in the morning. His service record is a brilliant one and there has never been the slightest hint of anything against him on security grounds.

'They knew nothing of anyone who might be Lothar, and the night duty-officer who was reporting to me obviously thought that I'd been sold a cock-and-bull story. No doubt that was partly because I had suggested in the first place that Washington was probably about to fly one of their super-bombers off to Russia; and it transpired that he hadn't. I told this sceptical type to order a check-up on all secret equipment at the base to see if anything was missing; and that he had better get his Chief out of bed to take over from him, or he might regret it. After that, to fill in time I got on to Thompson to enquire how the raid on that place at Cremorne had gone off.'

Barney suddenly looked up. 'Bejesus! My mind has been so taken up with Mary and Lothar that I've never given it a thought. How did it go, Sir?'

'Ace high. We bagged the lot with their pants down. Thompson said that when they went in it was like a scene from the Folies Bergere, and that he hadn't seen so many nudes since his uncle took him on a trip to Paris when he was a youngster. They were bundled up in a blanket apiece and taken off to Cannon Row. There were about thirty of them and some dozen coloured people, men and women, but they were only staff, and all appeared to be slightly loopy.'

'Have you got the names of the Satanists yet?'

'Not the lot. When I rang up the Special Branch boys were still grilling them. But among them there is one cop that the Yard are particularly pleased about. He is a saintly-looking old gentleman named Bingley. His speciality is luring little girls into back-lots and strangling them. After his last murder the police had a clear case against him but before they could arrest him he disappeared. That was five years ago, and evidently he has been lying low very comfortably in the house at Cremorne ever since.'

'How about Ratnadatta?'

'Oh, he's been sent up from Fulham, to join the rest of the bunch.'

'Do you think the police will succeed in getting enough evidence to prove that some of them murdered Teddy Morden?�

Verney shook his head. 'I rather doubt it. Our best hope of that is that one of them will turn Queen's Evidence. But these people are not ordinary crooks. Such previous experience as I've had with Satanists has shown that generally they are so terrified of their Infernal Master, and of other members of their Fraternity who have escaped the net, that they prefer to face any legal punishment for obscene behaviour, and so on, rather than risk what might come to them if they spilled the beans about anything the police have failed to find out for themselves. But, of course, Special Branch are searching the place from attic to cellar, so there is a chance that they may come upon some incriminating documents.'

'How about the photos of Tom Ruddy and Mary?�

'Thompson got those and several dozen others of a similar nature; and the negatives. The Ruddy job was no isolated case. It is clear that they have been running a regular blackmail racket, either to get money out of people or force them into doing the Devil's work. Now that we've busted the racket, with luck we may be able to persuade some of the victims to prosecute.'

'They might,' Barney agreed, 'seeing that in such cases the victim is protected from having his name made public; and if they did we'd be able to get some of these Satanist swine much longer sentences than any they would receive for moral turpitude. But what about the air base, Sir? You must have heard something further?'

'Of course. About seven o'clock Colonel Richter rang up. He is the U.S. top security man, and by then they knew they'd had it.

The base had made their check and reported a nuclear war-head missing. Richter sounded nearly as explosive as if he were an atomic war-head himself. He was just leaving to drive there to conduct a personal enquiry, and he promised to telephone me again as soon as he had got from his people the facts about Washington's departure. It is to hear from him I am waiting now.'

'May I wait here, too, Sir,' Barney asked.

'Certainly. I'll send for some more coffee. I expect you could do with a cup. As it is Sunday I have no appointments and I've already asked my No. 2 to attend to any special business, other than this, that might turn up. This thing is too big for either of us to take our mind off it until we are quite certain that there is no hope of retrieving the situation.'

Barney's face brightened. 'You think there might be, then?'

C.B. laid a finger alongside his big nose in a familiar gesture. 'From Cambridgeshire to Moscow is all of fifteen hundred miles. He couldn't fly that far in an ordinary aircraft without coming down somewhere on the way to refuel. As soon as Otto told me about his vision I saw the red light and I didn't wait for the Americans to do any checking. I got straight through to the Security Chief at N.A.T.O., and passed on to him Otto's description of Colonel Washington. I said I thought he had got away with a big bomber, but it might be a smaller aircraft, in which case he would have to come down to refuel and could easily be recognized on account of his unusual height and features. In any case, all stations were to be alerted to watch for any unscheduled aircraft crossing Europe in the direction of the Iron Curtain, and if spotted fighters were to be sent up to intercept and force it down.'

'You're certainly jolly quick off the mark, Sir.' Barney said with a note of admiration.

The older man shrugged. 'But not quick enough in this case, I'm afraid. If only Otto had come round to me at once we would have caught them for certain; but it was four o'clock before I could get cracking, and they had been in the air for three hours by then. If they were in anything that had the speed of an average airliner, they would have needed only another half hour's flying to cross the Iron Curtain. And once over it, of course, they would be in the clear; they could refuel without risk and fly on to Moscow. Still, there is just a chance that they had to come down this side of the Curtain and, if so, they may be being held pending a check up on them. If they are, we should hear pretty soon; or Richter may have done so already, as this is really a U.S. responsibility and he too will have been in touch with N.A.T.O.'

They had their coffee and some sandwiches and, to keep Barney from sitting brooding about Mary, C.B. made him give a much more detailed account of his doings the previous night. At eleven o'clock, as Colonel Richter had not come through, Verney 'phoned the Fulgoham air base and learnt that the Colonel was on his way up to London. At half past he was announced over the buzzer, and C.B. had him shown in at once.

The American Security Chief was short, tubby and round-faced, but there was nothing soft about him. His mouth was a hard line and his brown eyes, half veiled by heavy lids, were shrewd and calculating, yet he was not without a sense of humour. With a wry twist of his rat-trap mouth he declared that he would not waste time letting off steam. He had already done that by leaving a score of people down at the air base under close arrest for negligence; but he doubted if there was any case against most of them, as they had broken no regulation by allowing their Commanding Officer to fly off at any hour he liked in his own aircraft. The aircraft had been a twin-engined six-seater. Recently it had had extra fuel tanks fitted and with these had a comfortable range of seven hundred miles. It had taken off on a north-easterly course and automatic radar plots showed that it had continued on that course out over the North Sea for at least a hundred miles. If the course was held that meant that the aircraft should, at about five o'clock in the morning, have been over Southern Norway. The questioning of Colonel Washington's officers had brought out the fact that he had told several of them that he intended to spend his leave fishing in Norway. Richter therefore suggested the possibility that Washington was innocent and that someone else had stolen the atomic war-head earlier in the day; or perhaps several days ago.'

Verney promptly shot down that theory by making Barney give an account of Washington's association with Lothar, and stating that within his own knowledge Lothar had only a week earlier stolen a quantity of secret rocket fuel from the Experimental Station in Wales.

Richter blinked a little at Barney's description of the Black Magic ceremony from which he had narrowly escaped with his life; but he knew that such circles existed and, as a man answering Lothar's description had entered the air base with Washington, he agreed that the association left no doubt that it was they who had made off with the war-head.

Anxiously Barney asked, 'Was there a girl with them? A good-looking dark-haired young woman of about twenty-three?�

'Yep,' the Colonel replied. 'She was sitting in the back of the car. Washington told the gate guard that his two passengers were accompanying him on his leave. According to regulations they should have been signed in and given temporary passes, but seeing they were with the CO., and he was in a hurry, the guard skipped that formality. He is sitting in the cooler now, wishing he hadn't. Both passengers were later seen to board Colonel Washington's aircraft.'

That killed Barney's last hope that Mary might have got away and was somewhere in hiding. Instead she was still a prisoner of the two Satanists and perhaps by now behind the Iron Curtain. To hide his sick misery, he turned away to the big window that looked out over London's roof-tops.

'The course from Cambridgeshire to Moscow is North by East,' C.B. remarked, 'so, after flying about half-way to Norway, Washington would have had only to alter course to due East to be heading for his real destination. But he'd have to fly over Denmark, and she is a member of N.A.T.O. I had a hope that the 'plane might be picked up before it got through, and forced down.'

Richter shook his head. 'No dice, friend. His seven hundred mile range would have enabled him to get over the Iron Curtain before he had to come down to refuel. Still, I would have thought our observation posts would have had some record of an unscheduled aircraft flying over. But they haven't. I was on to N.A.T.O. H.Q. before I left Fulgoham and from round four o'clock on they had alerted every station from the Northern tip of Denmark down to Frankfurt, and they've registered nothing crossing the line that might have been our man.'

Barney turned back from the window and said to his Chief, 'I know it has always been your opinion, Sir, that Lothar is a Soviet agent; but Squadron-Leader Forsby takes a different view. He thinks that Lothar has broken with the Russians and has become just a scientist with cranky views, who is anxious to try out some private experiment. And Otto, you will recall, did report last week seeing him up in a cave among snow-covered mountains. If Forsby is right it seems possible that it really was to some secret hide-out in Norway that Washington has flown Lothar.'

'Maybe you're right, young feller,' Verney admitted. 'I only hope to God you are. That would account for his aircraft never having flown through the radio check, as the Norway stations were considered too far North to be worth alerting. Anyway, Otto intended to do an all-out concentration this morning on trying to locate his brother; so let's go down and find out if he has anything fresh to tell us.'

Five minutes later the three of them were in Verney's car on their way to Chelsea. Barney sat with the chauffeur and the other two in the back; so during the run C.B. was able to give Richter an idea of the strange bond that linked the Khune twins, and enabled them to contact each other on the psychic plane. While listening, the American eyed him somewhat dubiously but, in view of what he had already been told of the Satanic background to the whole business, he remarked: 'Well, there are stranger things ... and so on, as it says in Hamlet; so it's not for me to question your beliefs about this business.'

At the small hotel at which C.B. had secured accommodation for Otto, Verney told his friend the landlord that he wanted to have a quiet talk with his guest; so the landlord placed his private sitting-room at their disposal, and a few minutes later Otto came down to it.

After he had been introduced to Colonel Richter, and been told that they still had no definite information concerning Lothar's whereabouts, he said, 'He has not gone into Russia. I'm sure of that. He is back in the mountain hide-out where I saw him last week. I saw him there again this morning about nine o'clock, just after I woke up. And it can't be in the Caucasus because he wouldn't have had time to fly that far. He could hardly have got so far as Dalmatia, either; so it must be either in Norway or the Alps. It is a cave, high up above snow level. There is a cable railway up to the broad platform at its entrance, and inside the cave a number of lean-to's have been made and furnished as bedrooms and living quarters. I saw him there as clearly as I see you; and with him were the hook-nosed giant in American uniform and a pretty dark-haired woman.'

'Was she . . .' Barney gulped, 'was she looking all right? ' 'Well, she was a bit dishevelled and pale. No doubt she was tired from the journey. But otherwise she looked quite normal.'

By this time it was close on one o'clock; so C.B. asked the landlord to serve lunch for them in the private room in order that they could continue their talk without being overheard. It was not the first time Verney had made such a request, and the landlord willingly agreed.

After they had had a round of drinks they all felt better, and over the good meal that followed they were able to discuss the affair with relative calmness. But they got no further. When they had finished their meal C.B. told Barney that as no action could be taken for the moment, and he looked all in, he was to go home and to bed, so as to catch up on his loss of sleep. The others agreed to keep in touch in case of any fresh development, and before they separated it was agreed that they should all meet at Verney's office at nine o'clock the following morning.

On the Monday C.B. arrived at his office a little early to find that Otto was already there waiting for him. Without any preamble the scientist announced, 'They are in Switzerland; I'm sure of it.'

Verney's long face lit up. 'I supposed that they had come down near this mountain hide-out of Lothar's only to refuel from it, and that by this time they would have flown on to Russia. If you are right we may get them yet. But what makes you so certain that they are in Switzerland?�

'I couldn't swear to that, but I've spent several holidays in Switzerland and now I've been able to see more of the locality I'm convinced that it can be in no other country. Yesterday, in the evening, I got through to Lothar again, He was with the big American and they were standing on the rock platform outside the cave looking down into the valley, and all the features in it were of the kind I have seen in scores of Swiss valleys.'

C.B. picked up a ruler from his desk and stepped over to a big map of Europe that hung on the wall behind his chair. Stuck in it there were many pins with different coloured heads, the significance of which were known only to him and the senior members of his staff. Using the ruler as a rough measure, he said:

'Could be. From Cambridge to the southern tip of Norway or the frontier of Switzerland is just about the same distance -roughly five hundred miles. This aircraft had a fuel range of seven hundred, so he could have headed north-east for a hundred miles then swing right round to south south-west and gone in over Belgium with still enough fuel to carry him well into Switzerland. As only the radar screen that covers the Iron Curtain countries was alerted, he would have outflanked that, too. Have you any idea what they are up to in this cave?'

'I hadn't last night; but I have now.' Otto's face suddenly became grim. 'I woke about seven and succeeded in getting another look round the cave. I found that it is really a big curved tunnel. Its other entrance is from another broad out jutting shelf that cannot be seen from the valley below because it is hidden by a spur of the mountain. On it Lothar has a rocket, a mass of gear and...'

'A rocket!'

'Yes. As he has any amount of money he would have had no difficulty in getting a rocket shell and parts made to his specification, and he could assemble them himself. But, of course, it wouldn't have been any use to him unless he could get proper fuel and a war-head; so those he had to steal. Anyhow, on the far shelf outside the cave a twenty-five-foot rocket is lying, the drums containing my fuel are in a stack nearby, and for a launching pad he could not have a better base than the solid rock.'

'Good God, man!' C.B. exclaimed, aghast. 'D'you mean that he is intending to launch it?'

'There doesn't seem much doubt about that. At seven o'clock he, Colonel Washington, and a thick-set dark man were all hard at work round a forge, adapting the casing of the warhead from the bomb to serve as a cone for the rocket.'

At that minute Colonel Richter was shown in. When Verney told him the alarming news his rat-trap mouth worked silently for a few moments, then he said, 'Well, we've got something to be thankful for. Neither the fuel nor the H-bomb head have reached the Russians; and it doesn't look as though they are likely to.'

'But. . .' Verney began.

'I know, Colonel; I know,' the American cut in. 'Instead of having been left standing by an enemy agent, we have a madman on our hands. And the sort of party he may start with that warhead is no laughing matter. Still, with luck we might locate and grab him before he has a chance to set it off. If not it's going to be just too bad for quite a lot of Swiss.'

'I can't offer any concrete proof that this place is in Switzerland,' Otto said a shade hesitantly, 'although I've the strongest possible feeling that it is. But saying I'm right, there must be hundreds of valleys similar to the one I saw in my vision, and I've no means of directing you to it.'

'Only a small percentage of them would have cable railways,' replied Richter quickly. 'But what I don't get is why this crank should want to launch a rocket. And why do it in Switzerland? What does he expect to gain by killing a lot of Swiss? Mad he may be, but there must be some object that his crazy brain is aiming to achieve.'

'Because he launches it from Switzerland it doesn't follow that the war-head will explode there,' remarked C.B. Then he turned to Otto and asked, 'Can you give us any idea how far the fuel he's got would carry his rocket?'

After thinking for a moment the scientist said, 'I can give only an answer that may be widely out. So much depends on the weight of his rocket but, if it conforms to normal standards, I'd say that with my new fuel he could send a rocket of that size anything from four to eight hundred miles.'

Richter's heavily-lidded eyes opened wide, and he exclaimed, 'Snakes alive! Then if he has the know-how to direct it accurately he might put it down on Paris, London or Berlin.'

'He has the know-how all right,' Otto replied glumly. 'He has been a top-line rocket scientist from the Peenemunde days, and that is sixteen years ago. But he won't put it on Berlin. My family is of German extraction, and Lothar has always had a passion for the Fatherland.'

The door opened and Barney came in. He made a quick apology to his Chief for being late, explaining that a learner-driver had run into his taxi, so held him up while a policeman was taking notes. Then he said excitedly,

'I've got something here, Sir, that may prove important. Mrs. Morden thrust it on me just before we left the Cedars on Saturday night. Owing to all that happened afterwards I forgot about it, and yesterday afternoon I was so dead beat that I simply threw my clothes on the floor and flopped into bed. This morning when I picked them up I came across it in my pocket. It's a spool of recorder tape.'

Verney took the small nail-varnish carton and shook out the spool; then he switched on the inter-com. and asked for a tape-recorder machine to be sent up. Five minutes later the tape was inserted in the machine and being played back.

An American voice said harshly, 'Get your clothes off,' then Mary's voice came, panic-stricken and pleading that she really had not meant to run away. Next second her piercing screams rang through the room, followed by a ghastly sobbing, then silence.

Beads of sweat had broken out on Barney's face. Fiercely he exclaimed, 'The swine! The swine! Then she did try to escape from him but he caught her. Oh, the swine! What did he do to her!'

'Shut up,' snapped C.B., for Mary's voice was coming from the machine again, but now it was quite normal. She was saying, 'I behaved very stupidly yesterday when you were telling me about human sacrifice. If I am to be a really good witch I ought to prepare myself to witness such ceremonies...'

There followed her conversation with Wash which had culminated in his describing to her exactly how her husband had been murdered. Then there came another short silence.

'By jove, she's got us the goods!' Even C.B. could not suppress the excitement in his voice. 'What courage! Just think what she must have gone through without giving in; and the skill she showed in leading him into the trap. She deserves a decoration.'

Mary's voice came again, but this time so low that it was hardly more than a whisper. She said, 'This is Mary Morden with a message for Colonel Verney, care of Special Branch, Scotland Yard. Mary Morden for Colonel Verney. Anyone who comes into possession of this spool should take it at once to the nearest police station. You will have heard my screams. I was being tortured by a Colonel Washington of the U.S. Air Force in a house called the Cedars near Fulgoham. It was he, too, whom you heard give particulars of the murder of my husband. Colonel Washington brought me here last Saturday night from a Satanist Temple at Cremorne...'

While they listened with bated breath Mary went on to relate how she had gone to the Temple because she had recognized her dead husband's shoes on Ratnadatta's feet. After describing them she again spoke of Wash, giving a brief outline of his personality and background. Then she said,

'If Colonel Washington's confession to having witnessed the murder of my husband is not sufficient to arrest him on, some pretext for removing him from his command should be found at once; because he may endanger peace. He says his flying career may soon be brought to an end by the introduction of rockets, and I believe he is planning to start a new career by going over to the Russians. He says that Russia will never attack the U.S., but the U.S. may be driven by economic reasons to attack Russia. He thinks that given peace Russia will be able to wreck the commerce of the West and so dominate the world in ten years time. Therefore she would lay down the red carpet for anyone who could bring about the abolition of all nuclear weapons. A way to do this would be to drop an H bomb on Switzerland. Neither side would take action while trying to find out who dropped the bomb. Meanwhile, eyewitness reports of the horrors caused would lead to the democratic Governments of the West being forced by their people to agree a pact with the Soviet Government to scrap all nuclear weapons. The Russians could then go ahead without fear with their programme of underselling the West in the world's markets and conquest by peaceful penetration. Colonel Washington could fly one of his big aircraft out at any time, drop an H bomb on Switzerland, and fly on to reap a great reward in Russia. It is imperative that he should be deprived of the power to do so. Mary Morden for Colonel Verney, care of Scotland Yard.'

Dramatically the whispering ceased and the tape came to an end. For a moment the four men standing round the machine remained white-faced and silent. Then C.B. looked across at Otto and said,

'You were right. They are in Switzerland. But why, instead of taking one of his bombers and dropping the bomb, did Washington take only the war-head for use with the rocket?�

'Because in the Satanic hierarchy Lothar is his boss, and Lothar wanted it that way,' replied the scientist.

'But why?' Verney asked again.

'Only one answer to that,' snapped Richter. 'Lothar doesn't mean the big bang to take place in Switzerland. He has just kidded Washington along about that. He means to launch his rocket so that it hits some place else; and that could start a world war.'

'No,' C.B. shook his head. 'Forewarned is forearmed. He's got only one war-head. God knows that's bad enough. But as the Russians won't have launched it they will believe one of ours has gone off through some ghastly accident; so they won't follow it up with others. We must send out a signal to all concerned that we are expecting a maniac to launch one, and that the Russians have no hand in it, so there is to be no retaliation.'

'You are assuming that he will aim it on London or Paris,' said Otto quickly.

'Of course. He is a Communist, or at all events he worked willingly for the Russians for years.'

'He worked for the Russians, but he was never a Communist. He is a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. Over and above that, though, he is a Satanist. His aim is to disrupt all stable forms of government; to create a state of world anarchy, so that it becomes every man for himself, and in a new era of complete lawlessness and disorder the Devil will come into his own again.'

'Well, what do you deduce from that?' asked Richter sharply.

That if his rocket had the range to do it he would try to land it on New York; because it is the United States that he hates with a positive fanaticism. As it is he'll probably put it down on the other side of the Iron Curtain, hoping that the Russians will retaliate and blow most of the American cities off the map.'

'Maybe you've got something there,' the American admitted. 'I doubt though if Moscow would fall for that. He could aim it at Prague or Budapest, but I don't see the Russians entering on an all-out war because one of their satellites has been blitzed. They'll not risk their own cities being laid in ruins. It would be a different story if he could put it down in Moscow, but Moscow is thirteen hundred miles from Switzerland; so praised be the Lord, he can't.'

'One moment,' Barney cut in, addressing Otto. 'Have you any idea how high above sea level this cave is where Lothar has his rocket?'

'From what I know of the Alps it would be anything between eight and ten thousand feet.'

'Well, the atmosphere must be much more rarefied at that height. Isn't that going to decrease the resistance to the rocket on its take-off and greatly increase its range?�

Otto stared at him appalled. 'You're right!' he muttered. 'You're right! It could double it. It could give him the thirteen hundred miles he'd need to land it on Moscow.'

'God help us all, that's it then!' Verney smashed his fist down on his desk. 'Even if we warn the Russians in advance they'll never believe that we didn't launch the rocket. Within minutes of its landing they'll retaliate on America and Britain with everything they've got. At any moment now the world may go up in flames.'

CHAPTER XXIV IN THE CAVE

Mary sat hunched in the aircraft. In front of her Wash's huge shoulders blocked out the greater part of the dimly lit instrument panel. Faintly she could hear him humming to himself and, now that he was in his favourite element - the air - he seemed completely happy and relaxed. Behind her Lothar was sitting. She had caught only a glimpse of him as Wash had hurried her into the 'plane, but she was terribly conscious of his nearness to her and could actually feel on her spine the chill that emanated from him.

Wash's abrupt disclosure that he was taking her with him to Russia had shattered her completely. More, even, than the Great Ram's threat to put a curse upon her. About a curse there was something nebulous. For some inexplicable reason it might not mature; given unshakeable faith in one's own powers of resistance it could be made to rebound on its initiator or, if one could find a priest of sufficient saintliness one could get it lifted. But to be carried off to a distant country from which there was very little chance of ever getting back was a down-to-earth matter; and it was actually happening to her.

The lights of the air base had already disappeared and the 'plane was climbing steeply. In a matter of minutes now they would have left England behind and be flying through the dark night out over the North Sea. Dully her mind sought to probe the future. It would be utterly different from anything she had ever known. Never again would she see any of the friends she had made while married to Teddy, or live again in the pleasant little flat at Wimbledon on which she had lavished so much care. Her only link with the past - the only person she would know who could even speak her own language - would be Wash; and although he had the power to arouse her physically she felt no faintest spark of love for him. On the contrary, knowing the cruel and evil nature that lay below his casual cheerfulness, she hated him more bitterly every time she recalled, with shame, her own weakness in having let herself respond to his passion.

And when he had tired of her, what then? He had shown very clearly that when he wanted a thing he would stop at nothing to get it - and get it quickly. Rather than wait twenty-four hours he had made himself liable to an onerous penalty by carrying her off to the country instead of attending the Walpurgis Eve ceremony. Since, he had developed such an obsession for her that, only an hour ago, he had taken the appalling risk of defying the Great Ram rather than have her spoiled for him as a mistress. But such fierce obsessions never lasted. Within a few weeks, or months at most, any man who had made a habit all his life of sleeping with one pretty girl after another would tire of his new plaything. Mary had no doubt at all that his desire for her would cease as swiftly as it had begun; and that overnight he would throw her out for some fresh charmer. Where would he throw her? Presumably to the Great Ram to be cursed - unless with his revenues from the United States cut off he found himself in need of money. If that happened the chances were that he would postpone letting the Great Ram know that he had done with her, and first sell her into a Russian brothel.

Once again she bemoaned her folly in having let herself become caught in this terrible web through having recognized Teddy's shoes on Ratnadatta's feet. If only she had kept her promise to Barney! Well, at least she had saved him from paying with his life for her stupidity. She wondered if while struggling with his captors he realized that it was she who had enabled him to break free, and thought it unlikely. If that was so he would not even feel that he owed her anything. Neither could he have any idea how desperately she loved him. When he did give her a casual thought in the months ahead it would only be as Wash's mistress, and a born whore who, having delighted in the licentious rights practised by Satanists, had willingly left the country with her great brute of a lover.

The tears coursed silently down her cheeks until at length she drifted off to sleep.

She was woken by the aircraft beginning to bump. It was in cloud, but she could sense that it was descending, and shortly afterwards it broke clear so that on looking down she could see the extraordinary panorama that lay spread below them. They were flying over what seemed an endless vista of deep valleys and snow-capped mountains. The sun was still low and on their left, so that it lit only one side of each peak, and the valleys, in sharp contrast to the blinding whiteness of the snow-clad heights, were still irregular chasms of night-shrouded blackness.

As they came lower the bumping became much worse, so Wash took the aircraft up again to just below cloud level. Even there it was far from comfortable, and every few moments the 'plane dropped like a stone from fifty to a hundred feet. Several times now Wash changed course, and in one case circled right round a giant peak. Then he evidently got his bearings and in a series of shallow dives brought the 'plane right down until it was flying between two ranges of mountains. Turning where they opened out he came back, now perilously skirting great jutting crags. But he was a superb pilot and still seemed perfectly relaxed as he lay back with his long legs stretched out, his great hands firmly on the controls.

It was lighter now. Mary could see the dark woods on the lower slopes, and the green of fields in the bottom of the valley. They passed over a cluster of dwellings, came lower, gently now, and in another minute were running low over a long stretch of meadow. But Wash did not land. In a steep climb he took the 'plane out of the far end of the valley, circled and came in again, still more slowly. The 'plane bumped once, twice, then ran on smoothly for several hundred yards, until he braked it to a halt in front of an open hangar.

A short, swarthy man with a shock of dark wiry hair ran out from it, followed by two Chinese one of whom was carrying a ladder. Wash stretched a long arm back and undid the clamps of the aircraft's door. The ladder was put against it and, pushing past Mary, the Great Ram stepped out. Seizing his hand, the swarthy man kissed his ring, greeted him in some foreign language and helped him down the last few rungs.

When he had left the aircraft Mary found her voice. She was staring in surprise at the Chinese, and said to Wash, 'Where are we? Surely there are no great mountains like these in Russia. Have you brought us down in ... no, it couldn't possibly be Tibet; we haven't been in the air long enough.'

He laughed. 'This is Switzerland. We're stopping off here for a day or so on our way to Moscow; that's all.' As he spoke he ducked his head and thrust his great body through the doorway. Springing down, he turned at the foot of the ladder, held out his arms, and told her to jump.

Lothar was speaking to the swarthy man. When he had done, he turned to Wash and said, 'This is our brother Mirkoss. He is an Hungarian and a very clever engineer. He also speaks fluent Chinese, but he does not understand English. I have told him that you and your woman will be staying with us until the great work is completed, and that his men are to unload the crate with the greatest care. He will bring it and the luggage along later in the box car. We three will go on ahead.'

Mirkoss and Wash exchanged grins, then the latter, with Mary beside him, followed Lothar across the field to a narrow road running alongside a rock-strewn stream that foamed and hurtled along the valley bottom. On the road a car was waiting with another Chinese at its wheel. Lothar got in beside him, the other two got into the back, and it set off up the valley.

The road was steep and winding; soon it became no more than a rough track. It was bitterly cold and with a shiver Mary drew her coat more closely about her. They climbed for about two miles then, round a sudden bend, the track ended at what looked like a big barn with a chalet roof. From it steel cables looped upward from a succession of tall steel pylons set in the mountainside, to end far above the snow line at what looked like a small black hole.

They left the car and went into the chalet, which Mary now saw was an engine-house, with an opening at one end near which stood the cabin of the cable railway. The cabin was divided by a partition, the front section having benches to seat four passengers; the rear section was empty and evidently for carrying up stores. A fourth Chinese came out from a room at the back of the chalet and started the engine up, the others got into the cabin. There was a grinding sound as it ran the few yards along its landing rails, then, as it swung out into the open, silence.

The cabin moved steadily at a moderate pace but the ascent took nearly a quarter-of-an-hour. First they passed over rough grassy slopes, then a deep belt of dark fir trees, the branches of those in the higher part of which were powdered with snow. Beyond them the mountain was much steeper and, except where here and there grey rocks broke through, a convoluted sheet of dazzling white.

The sun had now risen above the chain of mountains opposite, so that only a part of the valley was left in deep shadow and Mary, who was seated facing it, found the scene one of almost terrifying grandeur. She had never before been up a mountain and would have enjoyed the experience had her mind not been distracted by thoughts of the grim company she was in.

Suddenly there came a clatter of steel on steel, and she looked round in alarm, but was reassured on seeing that they had reached the top. The cabin ground to a halt on a broad flat shelf of rock.

She now saw that the black spot she had seen from below was in fact the entrance to a cave at least twenty feet in height. It was lit by a row of electric bulbs spaced out along its ceiling, and along one side of it ran a range of low-roofed shallow wooden sheds; but it curved away into the mountain so she could not see its end.

As they got out, a blast of icy wind, carrying a flurry of snow, struck her with such force that she could hardly stand against it; but Wash took her by the arm and hurried her into the cave. Ten feet inside it they were sheltered from the wind and it was comparatively warm there, although she never discovered whether it contained some normal heating installation or conditions in it were made bearable by the Great Ram's Satanic powers.

He led the way down it and they passed the open doorway of a lean-to made from stout planks in which a Chinese cook was busy at a stove. The next shed along was a small dining-room. It was not even deep enough to have a bench along the far side of the table, which was formed by a flap projecting from the wall, but it was long enough to seat six people in a row on the near side and at its far end had shelves on which were a number of bottles. Their host pointed to the shelves and said:

'No doubt you would like something to warm you up. Food will be brought to you presently, but I shall not join you. I have learnt to do without such things for long intervals. You will also need sleep. But you will not sleep together. While you are here I forbid it; because it would arouse vibrations on the animal plane which could disturb the transcendental links that I have created.'

For Mary this last ordinance was a crumb of comfort, and Wash took it philosophically, remarking to her as Lothar left them, 'Me, I'm all for remaining just a simple Mage. What's the fun in becoming an Ipsissimus when it means that most all the time you're on an astral plane so high you've no use for your body. But don't fret, honey, we'll not be stuck here more than thirty-six hours. Come Tuesday night at latest we'll be in "little 'ole Moscow, and by then we'll have gotten a fine edge on our appetites.'

He took a bottle from the shelf and two broad-bottomed rammers, poured three fingers of Bourbon for her and three-quarters filled the other big glass for himself, swore because there was no ice container, and instead splashed a little water into both. She was still cold, so she took a long drink from the one he handed her. As the almost neat spirit went down she shuddered; but its reaction was swift and gave her the courage to ask,

'Why have we stopped off here, anyway?�

'See that big crate in the tail of the aircraft?' he grinned. 'That's the reason. It has in it the war-head of an H bomb.'

Realizing that he must have stolen it for some nefarious purpose she stared at him for a moment in consternation; then she exclaimed, 'But why? What do you mean to do with it?�

He swallowed a good half of his drink, set the glass down and replied, 'You're such a smart kid I'd have thought you'd have guessed, after what I told you a few nights back.'

'You . . . you can't really mean that you're going to let it off, here in Switzerland.'

'Sure, honey, sure. It's just that we mean to do. The big bang will scare the pants off the peoples in the West. They'll force their Governments to make a pact with the Soviets to scrap all nuclear weapons. That'll leave a free field for the Russians to go right on with their plans for making the world Communist, without fear of Uncle Sam being able to pull a fast one when he does see the red light. And we'll be made Heroes of the Soviet Union.'

Mary knew that it would be futile either to plead or argue. Even if she could have won Wash over that would now make no difference. Clearly in stealing the bomb he had acted only as the agent of the Great Ram, and he could not be diverted from his evil purpose. While coming up in the cabin of the cable railway she had not dared even to raise her eyes to his; and, with a swift sinking of the heart, she suddenly realized that, now he had got what he wanted from Wash, he might even go back on his agreement to postpone laying a curse on her.

In a low, anxious voice she put that possibility to Wash. But he told her not to worry, because the Great Ram would still need him to fly him on to Moscow.

Shortly afterwards the Chinese cook came in and laid places for three at the long narrow table. Then the stocky, shock-haired Hungarian, Mirkoss, joined them. They exchanged bows and smiles with him but, when the food was served, on account of his presence they fell silent. The meal was simple but good: firm baked lake fish, a ragout of veal with mushrooms, and a selection of excellent Swiss cheeses.

After it, Mirkoss beckoned them outside and a few yards along the cave, then threw open the doors of two adjacent sheds. Each had only a single bunk. Wash's belongings had been stacked in the one that abutted on to the dining cabin, and Mary's suitcase reposed in the other. They smiled their thanks to the Hungarian, smiled at one another, then entered their narrow but solidly made quarters.

As Mary shut the door her strength seemed suddenly to drain from her. Although she had slept in the aircraft the strain she had been under for many hours had been so great that she felt as if she had not closed her eyes for weeks. There were no sheets, only blankets, on the bunk, but pulling her clothes off, except for her chemise, she crawled in between them and almost instantly fell asleep.

It was late in the evening when Wash roused her to say that another meal was being prepared for them by the Chinese cook. At the far end of her cabin there was a small basin with running water, and above it a nine by four inch mirror. Getting up, she washed and tidied herself as well as she could, then joined Wash in the dining cabin.

He mixed drinks for them, this time having first gone to the entrance of the cave and broken off some icicles to chill the spirit; then Mirkoss came in and the Chinese served them with a dinner of sorrel soup, wild duck and a vanilla souffle'. When coffee arrived Mirkoss declined it and left them, but they sat over theirs for some time drinking with it a Swiss Apricot Brandy that seemed positively the essence of the rich ripe fruit.

They were on their third glass of this delicious local liqueur when both of them instinctively turned round. Their senses, not their hearing, had told them of the approach of the Great Ram, and he was standing silently behind them in the doorway. Ignoring Mary, he said to Wash:

'I do not need your help to-night but I shall require it to-morrow morning. You will be called at first light and we will set to work soon after dawn.'

'Just as you say, Exalted One,' Wash replied submissively; then he added, 'It shouldn't be a long job to fit a coupla time fuses to it. Reckon we could be done and on our way in the aircraft round about midday.'

'It is not my intention to explode the war-head up here,' announced the Great Ram calmly.

Wash gave him a puzzled look. 'Not here! But for why, Chief? Where could you find a site more suitable?'

'In a narrow valley such as this the effect of the explosion would be too localized. The blast could wreck only a few small villages and the fall-out beyond them would be negligible.'

'Hey, have a heart, Chief! That'll be plenty for our purpose. There's no sense in blotting out more folks than need be.'

'Some thousands at least must die if we are to achieve our object of horrifying everyone in the N.A.T.O. countries,' declared the Great Ram in an icy voice.

'But, Exalted One,' Wash protested, coming to his feet, 'you've got the darned thing up here now. I saw Mirkoss's Chinks humping it in. It would be simple to time fuse it to go up a coupla hours after we've quit, but one helluva job to hump it some other place and rig electric batteries to set it off. If it disintegrates a single village that'll sure be enough to scare the pants off every citizen in Europe.'

'There will be no necessity to transport it anywhere. I intend to adapt its case so that it can be launched from this cave as the war-head of a rocket.' 'A rocket!'

'Yes. I had the parts manufactured by a number of different firms, and Mirkoss and I have assembled them here. I have also secured a supply of the latest rocket fuel; so nothing remains to be done but to work out the weight-fuel ratio, now that the weight of the war-head is available to me, and to attach it to the body of the rocket. The calculations I shall do to-night. Tomorrow your strength may prove of value in lifting the war-head into position for Mirkoss and I to fix it; and, unless some quite unforeseen difficulty arises, we should be able to launch it on Tuesday.'

'But what's to be your target, Chief? What's to be your target?' Wash asked in a puzzled, anxious voice. 'No one's ever accused me of having a yellow streak when it comes to taking life. No, sir! Not when it's been to forward Our Lord Satan's work, or my own. But to put this thing down on a city doesn't make sense to me. It'll get all the write-up we want without that; and there's mighty few places of any size that hasn't a few Brothers or Sisters of the Ram among its citizens. You sure can't wish to blot...'

'I did not say I intended to drop it on a city,' the Great Ram interrupted coldly. 'But I cannot afford to risk the effect being localized to this one narrow mountain valley and a radius of only a few miles of almost uninhabited country. For a target I have selected the small town of Sannen, in the foothills on the far side of this range. Apart from the mountain areas it is in one of the least populated parts of Switzerland, and almost equidistant from Berne, Lausanne and Interlaken. All of them are a good thirty miles from Sannen, so should not be affected by the initial shock. As for the fall-out, wherever we create the explosion that will be dependent on wind and weather, and Our Lord Satan's will. And now, on this question, you will not presume to argue further.'

Turning on his heel he left them, and for a few moments Mary and Wash stared after him in silence. Then, with a shrug of his great shoulders, Wash said, 'He's right. To put this thing over a hundred-per-cent, there's just gotta be at least one township blown sky-high. Must be, so as the newsreel boys can get their pictures and show the world what nuclear war would mean. And let's face it, honey, what do a few thousand deaths matter, if that

insures against millions being slaughtered in a few years time?' Mary found it difficult not to agree, providing that his basic premises were right. But she still could not believe that the United States would ever attack Russia without provocation, and that if matters were left as they were an all-out war between the East and West was inevitable. She said so, and they argued for another hour, but found themselves going round in circles, so at last broke off and went moodily to bed.

As Mary had slept most of the day she had a thoroughly bad night. For hours she tossed and turned in the narrow bunk, trying to think of some way in which she could get a warning of the Great Ram's intentions to the Swiss authorities; so that, even if they were not in time to stop him launching the rocket, they could at least evacuate the town of Sannen and it's surrounding district. Yet she knew that such mind-searching was utterly futile, because up there in the cave she was as completely shut off from the outside world as if she had been on a desert island in the Pacific. At length she fell into a half-sleep made hideous by nightmare visions of collapsing walls, houses in flames, and screaming, terrified people. Finally her mind became a blank for a couple of hours, but when she was woken by the Chinese cook she had the impression that she had been asleep for only a few minutes.

A quarter-of-an-hour later she joined Wash and Mirkoss at breakfast. They had been up since before dawn working on the rocket, and as soon as they had finished eating they returned to it. Knowing that the Great Ram would be with them, so she need have no fear of suddenly coming face to face with him, she decided to explore the cave.

She found it to be a good two hundred yards in length, curving round to another entrance at its far extremity. Tiptoeing forward to within about forty feet of the opening, she stood for some minutes watching the activity going on there. To one side there was a stack of what looked like oil drums, to the other an open shed housing a glowing furnace at which Mirkoss was hammering on a piece of white-hot metal. Outside in the centre of a broad rock platform lay the rocket, half hidden by a cluster of upright steel girders, a derrick with heavy lifting chains, a pumping apparatus and all sorts of other paraphernalia, among which the Great Ram and Wash were working.

Turning, she made her way back more slowly, exploring as she went the shallow sheds that lined the walls of the cave. Some contained stores of various kinds, including a big cache of tinned food, others were sleeping cabins; and one was obviously the Great Ram's work room, as it had maps pinned up on its walls and contained a table-desk and filing cabinets.

In several places between blocks of two or three sheds there were lower tunnels running in at right angles to the sides of the big one. She cautiously explored them in turn, to find that some of them had pieces of machinery in them. They were all quite short and ended abruptly in a sloping rugged surface; so she thought it probable that most, if not all, of this big hole in the mountain owed its existence to mining operations which had later been abandoned.

Near the end of the tunnel to which the cable railway mounted, she came upon three other cabins of special interest. One was evidently the Great Ram's bedroom, the next a bathroom and the last equipped with wireless apparatus.

The bedroom she did not dare to enter. A glimpse of a small altar in it on which stood a human skull that had been made into a chalice was enough to make her shut the door quickly and pass on; but in the radio room she stood for a long time, wondering if she could possibly send a message by the set. Unfortunately she was totally ignorant of everything to do with such things and had never even learned the Morse alphabet, so she was forced to abandon the idea.

However, the bathroom was a most welcome discovery, as it provided her with the means of whiling away an hour or two and, having collected from her suitcase her toilet and manicure things, she spent the rest of the morning there.

Wash and Mirkoss took barely a quarter-of-an-hour over their lunch, then hurried back to work; so she was again left to her own devices for the whole afternoon. With the idea that she might possibly suborn the Chinese cook, she visited his galley and attempted to enter into conversation with him; but she found that he did not understand a word of English, or French, which was the only foreign language of which she had a smattering. The other Chinese, she concluded, lived down below in the engine-house, and were brought up only when required for special jobs; so it seemed that there was very little chance of her getting a message out by one of them.

Nowhere could she find anything to read, even if she could have settled to it; so in desperation she returned to the bathroom where she spent a good part of the afternoon washing her hair and trying out different methods of arranging it so as to render as little conspicuous as possible the quarter inch of undyed gold that had grown up from her scalp.

Somehow she got through the hours until the early evening and when Wash and Mirkoss had bathed she joined them for dinner. The Hungarian was perforce, as usual, silent, but Wash was nearly silent too, which was most unusual for him; so Mary asked him the reason.

At first he hedged, saying that he had had a long day, and on heavy work of a kind to which he was not accustomed. But when Mirkoss had left them she pressed him further, and he said in a low voice,

'I'm having kittens, honey. The Big Chief's playing some deep game of his own. He's flat lied to me over this rocket set-up, and if he'll do that about one thing he'll do it about another. Could be that now he's gotten all the help he wanted from me, he means to do me dirt.'

'That's bad,' she whispered back with quick concern. 'What sort of he has he told you?'

'He said he meant to aim the rocket to fall on a little burg called Sannen. You heard him, last night. Well, we worked like buck niggers all day and the rocket's set up. Wants only the right amount of gas pumped in and she'll be ready to go. But her mechanism is not adjusted to send her in the right direction. Saanen is over the range to the west of here. Must be if it's half-way between Lausanne and Interlaken. The rocket is oriented near due north-east, so he must mean to send it some place else.'

'Did you question him about it?'

Wash ran a hand through his almost white hair before he replied in the same hushed, conspiratorial voice, 'Nope. My Satanic name's not Twisting Snake for nothing. Times are when it pays best to let the other feller think he's got away with playing you for a sap. He's more like to show his hand then. Gives you a better chance of saying snap.'

'Have you any idea where he might mean to send the rocket?'

'I had one notion. It can't be right, though. Doesn't make sense. Yet if I were right you and I have got no future. I'd give a mighty fat wad to be a hundred-per-cent certain that I'm wrong.'

'I think you could, without much difficulty.'

He gave her a quick look. 'Tell, honey.'

'While you were all working this morning I explored the whole place pretty thoroughly. Near the far end of the tunnel he has an office. There are maps on the walls and papers scattered over the desk. All his calculations must be there somewhere. If you could get in...'

'That's certainly an idea. Wonder if he keeps it locked.'

'As he doesn't bother to lock it in the daytime, I don't see why he should at night. Up here there is certainly no risk of burglars.'

'Sure, honey, sure.' Wash gave a sudden grin. 'Then we'll go along presently and have a look-see. Whether he ever sleeps or not I wouldn't know, but there's Mirkoss and the cook, so we'd best give the place a chance to settle down.'

For another hour and a half they continued sitting at the table, occasionally exchanging a remark or taking a sip of the Apricot Brandy, then Wash stood up and said in a whisper, 'Let's get weaving. Go quiet as you can. I'll follow you. Pull up on the outer curve of the tunnel ten yards before you come to his office. Point it out to me as I pass, then keep your eyes and ears on stalks. Anyone coming don't cough; just start walking on again natural. I trained my hearing young on the prairie, so I'll catch your footfalls and be out alongside you time you come opposite the office door. Then if its the Big Chief I'll tell him I was taking you to have a sight of the rocket in the moonlight. O.K.?'

She nodded and he followed her out. The lights along the roof of the tunnel were kept on night and day, and in all the cabins there were pilot lights that gave out a faint blue radiance, like those in the sleepers of International Pullman cars. Very quietly they walked down two-thirds of the length of the tunnel, then she halted and followed his instructions. The door of the office was not locked and he was in there a good ten minutes. To her it seemed an interminable time as she strained her ears for approaching footsteps, and her eyes into the semi-gloom behind her. But at last he emerged, and closed the door gently after him.

Taking her arm, and still walking softly, without uttering a word he led her back to the dining cabin. There, in the brighter light, she saw that his normally ruddy face had gone a queer shade of grey, and that his black eyes held a murderous glint.

'Well,' she asked in a whisper.

He sat down heavily, and muttered, 'What I thought a crazy idea was right. It's all worked out there. He's aiming to put it on Moscow.'

At first Mary did not realize the full implications, so she said, 'I can't help feeling sorry for the Russians; but thank God it's not London.'

For a moment he stared at her then, his voice still low, he broke into a tense spate of words, 'Be your age, woman! The Russians will take it that the West launched the rocket at them. They'll not wait to ask questions. They'll think we've tried to shoot 'em sitting down. Before what's left of Moscow's gone up in smoke they'll press the button. Within twenty minutes New York, Washington, Pittsburg, Detroit will be just heaps of poisonous ruins-and London too. The West will react with all its got; land-based rockets, rockets from subs and cruisers, H bombs from aircraft. Russia's got subs, cruisers and long-range aircraft too -plenty. I'd give it three days, and every city west of a line Urals, Persia, India will have had it. Tens of millions dead, hundreds of millions dying; the whole of civilization as we know it to hell and gone.'

'Oh God!' she breathed, 'Oh God! Somehow we must stop it!'

'That's easy to say; but you know the man we're up against. I'd never be able to argue him out of anything he's set on.'

'But why, why does he want to do this frightful thing?'

'I'd hazard a guess. Another hunch. But things he's said fit into the picture. He knows that Russian Communism isn't Communism any more. The Soviet is reverting to a bourgeois state. I'd seen that one for myself. It's why I figured it to be the best bet as a place to spend the rest of my life in ease and plenty. But it's no longer good soil for sowing the seeds of the Old religion. And that's all the Great Ram gives a cuss about. "Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole of the Law." As long as there's settled Governments, doing that means risking a stretch in prison. But with a state of universal anarchy; well, ask yourself? Our Lord Satan would come into his own again in a real big way, wouldn't he?'

Suddenly Mary's blue eyes lit up and she stormed at him, 'It's you who are to blame for this! It's you who have made this horror possible! You let him fool you into giving him your bloody bomb. He is a real Satanist. You are not, any more than I am. You've just made use of the cult because it suits you. You only wanted rich living for yourself; to loll around on the profits of girls you have forced into prostitution; to listen to music while fine food is being prepared for you, then take your fill of drink and women.'

For a moment she thought he was going to strike her. But instead he gave himself a quick shake, then seemed to sag, and admitted, 'Maybe you've got something there. The Old Faith is the right one though. Prince Lucifer is the Lord of this World, and those who serve him come out tops.'

'Do they?' she countered hotly. 'Then what about yourself? Instead of being a Hero of the Soviet Union this time next week, you'll either be dead or trying to catch a stray dog to eat.'

'There's no going back on what's done,' he muttered miserably. 'It's by Our Lord Satan's will that it should be this way, and we've just got to take it.'

'No.' Mary stamped her foot. 'You can save yourself and countless innocent people. You must sabotage that rocket.'

'I can't. I wouldn't dare,' he protested. 'Just think what I'd let myself in for. If I threw a spanner in Our Lord Satan's work I'd be whipped down to Hell and slow roast while a thousand devils nipped bits off me till the world goes cold.'

'There is a power greater than Satan's that would protect you.'

'Maybe that's what you think. But no one's ever proved it.'

'Yes. I have. You saw me throw that crucifix. It was only a little thing of wood and ivory; but look what it did to your Great Ram. It rendered him as weak as water. For ten minutes he hadn't the power left to harm a rabbit.'

Wash's dark eyes opened in wonder. 'That's true,' he murmured. 'Sure, I saw it happen. Somehow I'd never thought of it like that.'

'Think of it now then. If the Powers of Good can intervene to save an individual, what wouldn't they do to protect a man who saved all humanity? Wash, you must sabotage this rocket. It's your great chance to make a come-back. Every evil thing you've

� ever done will be forgiven. You could sabotage it, couldn't you?' He considered for a minute. 'Yeah. Not completely. Now it's been erected I couldn't get at the war-head. But I could drill a small hole in the casing, that wouldn't be spotted. Be large enough though to cause the fuel to leak when it jerked into flight. That'd ensure it coming down somewhere this side of the Iron Curtain.'

With a sudden uplift of the heart Mary realized that he was on the brink of surrendering to her. Grasping him by the arms she pulled him to his feet, gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, and cried, 'Come on then! What are we waiting for?�

As though in a daze he let her pull him out of the cabin. Side by side they tiptoed down the tunnel. When they reached its far end he seemed to have got his wits about him again and to have made up his mind to take the desperate gamble she had urged upon him. As they came level with the pile of fuel drums he said hoarsely,

'Get in among those. Keep watch for me. If you hear anyone coming tap lightly on one of the drums. Stay there till they've passed you, then sneak back to your cabin. If there has to be a show-down I'd as lief have you out of it.'

She pressed his hand and let him go forward, while she crouched down among the drums in a position where she was hidden by deep shadow but could see in both directions. To her left was the empty, dimly lighted curve of the lofty tunnel, to her right and thirty feet away the out-jutting platform of rock with the rocket now standing upright among its vaguely-seen tangle of launching gear.

Beyond it was darkness. Cloud had come down blotting out the stars, and wisps of grey mist swirled about the entrance to the cave. To the right the forge still glowed dully. She saw Wash go into the shed where it stood. For some minutes he remained there, presumably selecting the right tools for the job. While she crouched among the drums she prayed frantically. At last he reappeared. As he walked towards the rocket she turned to look in the opposite direction. Unheard by her a figure had come into view. Her heart missed a beat. Only twenty yards away, with silent tread, the Great Ram was approaching.

CHAPTER XXV RACE AGAINST TIME

For a moment the four men in Colonel Verney's office remained stunned by the appalling conclusion they had come to about Lothar's intentions. Then C.B. pressed the switch of his inter-com and said to his P.A. 'Get me No. 10. I want one of the P.M.'s secretaries. On my other line get me one of the Staff Officers of the Chief of Defence. Then get the United States Embassy. All calls top priority.'

In barely a minute the first call came through. C.B. recognized

the voice at the other end. 'George, I've got to see the Prime___'

'He is just going in to Cabinet.' 'Then you must hold him for me. Safety of the Realm. A further development of the theft of the secret rocket fuel that I reported to him last week, and a matter of the utmost urgency. I'm coming round at once.'

The second telephone was already buzzing. He picked it up. 'Who's that?''. .. Oh Stanforth, is your Master in the Office?' '. . . Good. I'm sending a Mr. Sullivan round to see him. Whatever he is doing he must break it off to hear a verbal report concerning the Safety of the Realm. Nothing, repeat nothing, must interfere with your Master's seeing Sullivan at once.'

The first telephone was buzzing again. C.B. gestured to Richter. 'That'll be your Embassy. Over to you.' The American took the call and arranged for an immediate interview with his Ambassador.

Barney had left the room. Now he came back and said, 'I've ordered your car round, Sir. It'll be here in a minute.'

THE SATANIST

C.B. nodded. 'We'll go together. While I'm seeing the Prime Minister, you will put the Chief of Defence fully in the picture and warn him that the P.M. is certain to want him round at No. 10 by the time you have said your piece.' Turning to Richter he added, 'When we are through with reporting we had better rendezvous here to inform each other of reactions. I'll probably be asked to attend a Cabinet. If so, it may be midday before I'm back. But none of us can do any more until we know what decision has been taken on the highest level.'

'Do you wish me to stay here?' Otto asked.

'Yes, you will have this office to yourself. Try to get into touch with Lothar again, and do your damnedest to find out whereabouts in Switzerland this cave is situated.' As Verney spoke he was already hurrying from the room, followed by Richter and Barney.

Two minutes later the American jumped into his Cadillac, and the other two set off for Storey's Gate. There they separated, Verney going through the back way into Downing Street, and Barney into the Ministry of Defence.

Barney was first back. In the P.A.'s office he found Inspector Thompson waiting to see his Chief. Unaware of the possibility that London might be blown to smithereens before the day was out, the Inspector was in high good humour. When they had exchanged greetings he said:

'I've fixed things for Tom Ruddy. He's back in the fight again.'

'Ruddy,' Barney repeated vaguely; then with an effort he brought his mind back to his work of the past two months, which now seemed to have little significance.

'Yes,' the Inspector went on, 'when we raided the place at Cremorne we found a score or more other photographs; different people, of course, but similar to the one they took of him. Last night I went down to Ruddy's place and had a talk with him. I suggested that he should show the whole lot to his missus, including the one of himself and Mrs. Morden, and that I'd vouch for it to her that the whole lot were fakes - composite photographs blended together by a gang of ordinary crooks for blackmail purposes. He agreed, and the old girl swallowed it. So he's standing again and I've not a doubt that he'll be elected as the new boss of his Union.'

'Well done,' Barney murmured. 'How about the bunch of Satanists you pulled in?'

The Inspector grinned. 'Oh boy, what a haul! A strangler who's been on the wanted list for five years, a bank-note forger whose goods we found in his wallet when we collected their clothes, a Czech secret agent that we didn't know was in the country, and a publisher who has distributed more poisonous literature than the Communist H.Q. itself. The rest of them are just degenerates, mostly rich people and well known. Now we've had a chance to check up we've found that it was them and the people in the blackmail photographs who have been paying the fat cheques into the so-called "Workers' Benevolent Institution". So this is going to put an end to one of the biggest sources of the funds used to sabotage British industry.'

'If a lot of them are important people this is going to create a first-class scandal,' Barney remarked.

'It certainly will,' Thompson agreed. 'I've a feeling, though, that the Home Office may decide to play down the Black Magic side of it, because there are names involved that might shake the public's confidence in a variety of national interests. It's probable that the bulk of them will get away with loss of reputation on conviction of simply being concerned in obscene practices.'

'But, damn it all, some of them are Tony Morden's murderers.'

'Naturally, we are going into that, and we shall move heaven and earth to get the goods on those who were concerned in it.'

'We've got the goods already. I brought back from Cambridgeshire a tape recording of a conversation between Mrs. Morden and a Colonel Washington. In it he gave her the Satanic names of the actual murderers and a description of the murder. Among the documents you seized at Cremorne you will find the Lodge's membership book. You have only to look through it to get the real names of those the Colonel mentioned by their Satanic ones.'

'That's splendid news.' The Inspector rubbed his hands. 'Like the strangler and our other beauties, they will be dealt with separately, of course. It will be necessary to take special measures, though. Much of the evidence will have to be supplied by your department, so it is certain that Colonel Verney will ask for these cases to be tried in camera.'

Barney shrugged. 'I'm not interested in providing the public with sensations. All I care about is making certain that these fiends swing; particularly Ratnadatta, and his name was among those given to Mrs. Morden. What is more, according to her, a week ago he was wearing a pair of shoes that he must have taken off Morden's body. They are brown, hand-made by Lobb, and the left one has a bad scratch on the toecap. It is quite on the cards that he was wearing them when I turned him in at Fulham and still has them on. You might check on that.'

'I certainly will. If not, the odds are that we'll find them at his digs. Either way that will put him into it up to the neck. Have you any idea when Colonel Verney will be back?�

Barney was brought back with a jerk to the desperate situation which had sent his Chief hurrying off to Downing Street. He shook his head. 'I couldn't say. But I do know that he is on a top-priority job. When he does come back I very much doubt whether he'll be able to find time to see you.'

Reluctantly, the Inspector stood up. 'Oh well, in that case there's not much point in my waiting. I'll look in again to-morrow morning.'

As he turned away, Barney wondered grimly if there would be a to-morrow morning. Perhaps Ratnadatta and the other Satanists would never be called upon to stand their trial. Instead they might shortly be reduced to a few ounces of ash that by some freak of chance might mingle in the wind with other ash that had once been himself and Inspector Thompson.

Knowing that in C.B.'s room Otto was again attempting to overlook Lothar, Barney remained in the outer office killing time as best he could until the others should return. It proved a long wait but when they did arrive it was within a few minutes of one another.

Otto had nothing of moment to report. He had been able to catch only occasional glimpses of his brother who, it seemed, had spent the whole morning out on the platform at the far entrance to the cave working on the rocket. Colonel Washington and the thick-set man with the black wiry hair were still helping him. Mary had not been visible.

C.B. leaned against the edge of his desk, his long legs stretched out before him, and asked Richter, 'What had your people to say, Colonel?'

The tubby American made a grimace. 'At first they thought I was round the bend, but they couldn't laugh off Washington's having flown out with the war-head. The Ambassador got on the Transatlantic blower. He couldn't raise the President. He's on a golfing holiday; but he spoke with the State Department and the Pentagon. I don't have to describe the resulting flap. Everything has been alerted and some fool has now only to drop a pin for the whole lot to go off. But what was the alternative? At least we'll lose not a second in shooting back, if it does happen.'

'Our Service Chiefs are doing the same,' Verney announced. 'Did your man suggest at any stage that we ought to warn the Russians?'

'Sure; but the Pentagon shot that down. They take the view that Moscow would never credit us with being on the level. They'd believe that this was some sort of a trick. Just one of those things, if you'll pardon me, Colonel, that a whole lot of other nationalities think the British are so good at - putting up a rabbit that will later enable them to say that it was no fault of theirs that the party ever started.'

Verney smiled, pleased that at such a time of crisis his opposite number should have kept his sense of humour sufficiently to deliver that sly crack. He asked:

'How about shooting first? At the Cabinet meeting I've just come from one Minister was very bellicose. He insisted that if we waited for Russia's reactions to Lothar's rocket we'd be blown off the map before we had a chance, and that our only hope of survival was to pull the trigger right away. But, thank God, the others wouldn't hear of it.'

'Same with our folk. First reactions of some of the Pentagon boys was to go to town right away; but the State Department overruled them.'

'Then in the main our Governments are thinking alike.'

'Yes; praise be. When I left, my Ambassador was on his way down to see your Prime Minister. Meantime, he's given me carte blanche on behalf of the United States Government to take any steps I can that might stop it.'

Verney nodded. 'It's the same in my case. I've already been through to the head of Interpol, and our Foreign Secretary is sending an "Immediate" secret cipher signal to our Ambassador in Berne. Naturally the Swiss will give us every possible help, and in the hope that they may be able to locate Lothar's cave I propose to fly out to Switzerland at once.'

'You've taken the words out of my mouth, Colonel. I've already used my Ambassador's name with Pan American at London Airport - quicker than our motoring down to the nearest U.S. air base. They've pushed some passengers off a 'plane and are holding it in readiness.'

'It's a pleasure to work with you,' C.B. smiled. Then he turned to Barney and Otto. I'd like you with me, Sullivan, and you had better come too, Mr. Khune. The nearer you are to your brother the better chance you'll have, I take it, of locating him.'

In such circumstances there could be no question of their delaying to pack bags. As C.B. passed through the outer office he told his P.A. that any communication to him should be made through Interpol H.Q. at Geneva, then the four men hurried down to the waiting cars.

The whole morning had gone in conferences, so it was now well past lunch time and they did not arrive at London Airport until a quarter to three. There they were escorted straight through to the airliner and, shortly after it had taken off, they sat down to a meal. Verney then sent a radiogram to Interpol asking that a senior official should meet them with a car at the Geneva airport.

It was six o'clock when they got in. A thin, dark, brisk-mannered Italian Commandante, named Fratelli, met them and whisked them into the city, then along the lakeside to the fine park in which the International Conference buildings stand. Half an hour after landing they were closeted with Monsieur Martell, the grey-haired Chef de Surete, to whom C.B. had spoken on the telephone while still at 10, Downing Street.

For security reasons Martell had been asked only to use all his resources to trace Lothar Khune, Colonel Washington and Mary Morden, with such information as might enable him to do so. Now C.B. put him fully in the picture and, as they were old friends, although Martell showed amazement and consternation, he did not question the statement that the wanted men possessed occult powers.

Having heard Verney out, he said, 'Within minutes of your speaking to me I had these people's descriptions circulated and a big reward offered for information concerning them. But, as you know, we are an international organization, so our main strength lies in the airports and frontier posts. The interior is a matter for the Swiss police. Naturally, I passed the word to my Swiss colleague at once, and for some hours they have been making enquiries. I will get through and see if he has any news.'

For a few minutes he talked on one of his telephones, then he hung up and shook his head. 'As yet, my friend, nothing. Now that May has come the cable railways are being opened up again, but many remain closed all through the winter and are not yet once more in commission. The probability is that it is one such in a sparsely populated area that this man Lothar Khune has made use of while it was deserted, and without the knowledge of the authorities.'

'A check-up must be made on every one of them with a minimum of delay,' said Verney quickly.

'Agreed' Monsieur Martell promptly conceded. 'But remember that so far the Swiss know only that we are seeking three people urgently. They are not yet aware that their lives, and those of millions of others, depend on the success of their efforts; so ...'

Richter raised a hand. 'Sure, but you will appreciate the necessity for keeping the awful truth from all but the people at the top. If it got out there would be nation-wide panics, thousands of suicides and a leak to the Russians which would probably lead to their opening the ball right away.'

'That's so,' Verney agreed. 'But our Foreign Secretary was going to send a code message to our Ambassador in Berne and instruct him to inform the Swiss Government.'

'Ah!' exclaimed Martell. 'That is better, much better. Realizing the full danger the Government will exert itself to the maximum. By now, perhaps troops may even have been called out to assist the police in their searching and questioning. But all reports will go to Berne. I shall receive them here only later. Therefore, if I may advise, you should proceed at once to the capital. I must remain here to redouble the activities of my own people; but Commandante Fratelli is at your disposal and will open all doors for you on your arrival.'

His advice was sound so they accepted it at once, and a few minutes later he was seeing them off in the car on their way north-eastward. For the first thirty-eight miles their route lay along the north shore of Lac L6man and even their anxieties could not altogether prevent their taking in the beauties of the scene. To one side lay the five to ten mile wide sheet of now placid water, with occasional tree-surrounded chateaux and chalets standing in gardens that ran down to its shore. On the other, the ground rose gently at first, then more steeply, towards the Jura range, the whole being either meadows, in which herds of a curiously mushroom-coloured breed of cows grazed, or orchards. The latter - mainly plums, pears and apricots - were a mass of blossom as, also, in brighter hues, were the chalet gardens of their owners.

Every few miles they passed through a village or small town, each neat, clean and orderly, with gay massed flowers in the beds of its central square. The sight of such peace and unforced prosperity made them more than ever conscious of the incredible evil that Lothar planned to bring upon the world, by turning all this into shambles so that even the few survivors would be forced to live like pariah-dogs in the ruins of what had once been their pleasant homes.

On entering Lausanne they mounted steeply through the streets of the city to come out on much higher ground, from which they caught some panoramic views of the lovely lake before leaving it behind. The road now lay through flattish country, fringed on both sides with orchards and meadows, many of which were a sea of golden dandelions. There were, too, more beautifully kept villages, huge barns with chalet roofs, and often villas in the gardens of which fine magnolia trees were in full blossom; but the light was failing now, taking the colour out of the flowers, and by the time they reached the picturesque old city of Fribourg it was nearly dark. The last twenty miles were soon eaten up and at just on ten o'clock Fratelli brought the car to a halt in front of the Police Headquarters in Berne.

Martell had telephoned so they were shown straight up to the office of the Chief-of-Police. Actually, as Fratelli told them afterwards, the elderly square-faced stolid-looking man who received them was not the Chief-of-Police, but his Deputy by seniority, as the Chief had been involved in a car smash a few days earlier and was in hospital.

The acting Chief stood up, bowed sharply from the waist, and introduced himself as 'Tauber'. He had no news to give them, but said that he had that afternoon been told by the Minister of the Interior of the menace to world peace, and was doing everything possible to trace the people concerned. He added that he had not been informed upon what evidence it was believed that a madman with an H bomb had brought it into Switzerland and proposed to launch it from a mountain cave, and that he was anxious to have particulars.

Verney at once complied, giving him an abbreviated version of the whole story. When Herr Tauber had heard it he raised his grey eyebrows until they almost met the bristling grey hair that grew like a brush above his low forehead; then he said angrily,

'But, Colonel, this is not evidence. It is not even hearsay.

There can be no more to it than the predictions of a gipsy woman who has gazed into a crystal.'

'It's no prediction that Colonel Henrik G. Washington stole and flew off with a nuclear war-head,' Richter rapped out. 'That's a fact.'

The Police Chief grunted 'I do not question that. But why should he bring it to Switzerland? That he should take it to Russia would make sense or, if he could not fly so far, to Czechoslovakia or East Germany, perhaps, but...'

It was evident that the bulky, heavy-jowled man had not yet grasped the significance of what he had been told of the intentions with which his visitors credited Lothar; so C.B. interrupted him to cross the t's and dot the i's of the matter.

Tauber shrugged. 'In crooks I believe; in madmen I believe; but not in fairies or magicians. Even to suggest that such people exist, in this age of science, is an absurdity. I have no wish to be rude to this Mr. Khune whom you have brought with you, but in my opinion he is the victim of delusions.'

'We, on the contrary,' Verney declared coldly, 'are satisfied

that he is perfectly sane, and may yet be able to locate this mountain cave in which his brother has set up a rocket.'

'Then he will be cleverer than myself and my police. After our Minister had sent for me this afternoon, we studied the maps of the country and listed all its cable railways. On account of Switzerland's unrivalled position as a tourist centre, in the past eighty years or so a considerable number of these railways have been constructed by our excellent engineers. Some are open, others are still shut because the snow at their upper terminals has not yet melted sufficiently for them to be workable. All those either in use or that might have been put into temporary use without the knowledge of the authorities have been inspected within the past few hours. None of them is being put to the use you suggest. The cave you speak of is a myth; a figment of the imagination.'

Otto gave him an angry look. 'I've climbed quite a lot in Switzerland. I've several times seen old ski-lifts and cable hoists that for one reason or another have been abandoned. Have all of those also been checked up as still inoperative?'

'Not the ones in the more remote valleys,' Tauber admitted grudgingly. 'Besides, most of those were constructed by private enterprise so there would be no record of them here in Berne; only at the administrative centres of the cantons in which they are situated.'

Verney sat forward quickly. 'But that is just the sort of railway that Lothar Khune would have made use of. Even if you have to call out every policeman in the country, not one of them must be left unvisited. Just think what it may mean if we fail to lay this man by the heels before he can let off his rocket.'

The Police Chief nodded ponderously. 'Providing you cut out all this talk of Satanism being at the bottom of it I'd be inclined to agree with you. I'm willing, though, to concede that we are up against a madman and, although you've given me no proof of it, accept the possibility that he is in this country. That being so, I'll send out an emergency call for an exhaustive search in all mountain areas. But there is little point in starting it before dawn; because the patrols would not be able to see more than twenty yards, even with powerful torches.'

For a moment everyone remained silent, then Verney said, 'A few hours may make the difference between life and death for more men, women and children than the mind is capable of grasping. Is there no way in which we could identify the probable site of this railway and cave; so that we could raid it first thing in the morning?�

Otto looked across at him. 'In my spirit I've been to the entrance of the cave several times now, and on most the weather has been clear; so I have a good mental picture of the view from it. Do you think that if I drew the sky-line from memory someone might be able roughly to identify the place from which it was viewed?'

'That's a great idea,' Richter enthused. 'Go to it, Mr. Khune, and give us that picture.'

Tauber shrugged, but pushed a sheet of paper and a pencil towards Otto, then lit a cigar and offered the box, and a box of cigarettes, round to the others. They declined the cigars but accepted cigarettes and for some minutes sat smoking in silence while Otto made two false starts then drew a very good picture of a mountain range with a high peak near its centre.

Taking it from him, the Police Chief gave it a quick look, but put it down with a shake of his square, bristly head. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'no visitor to Switzerland ever sees more than a hundredth part of the country. The great central massif of the Alps covers an enormous area. From Mount Pilatus to the Matterhorn is seventy-five miles, and from Mont Blanc to St. Moritz one hundred and fifty. Between those four points lie hundreds of peaks, innumerable ridges and perhaps a thousand valleys. How could we possibly expect anyone to pinpoint the spot from which this sketch is said to be made? You might as well draw one fir tree and ask us to identify it in a ten-acre fir forest.'

Barney, as the junior member of the party, had so far bottled himself up, but now he burst out. 'No one expects you to, and maybe there's no one here in Berne that could either. But there must be locals who could. I suggest you have that sky-line stencilled immediately and a copy despatched by special messenger to every village police station in the mountain area.'

'Good for you, young man!' boomed Richter. 'He's hit it, Chief. Don't lose a moment. Have every machine you've got put into operation. We'll need hundreds of copies. Then, if you've not men enough of your own, call out Army despatch riders to deliver them.'

'That's it.' C.B. came to his feet. 'We have got to find this place; and quickly. It may be your private belief that we have been made fools of, but there is no getting away from it that an H-bomb war-head has been flown out of England. We believe it to be here in Switzerland, and that it may at any time be used to start a world war. You cannot possibly afford to take a chance on our being wrong.'

Suddenly Tauber's manner changed. The terrible possibilities of the situation seemed at last to have penetrated his thick skull. As he reached for one of the telephones on his desk, he said, 'You are right. It was this talk of a Satanist with occult powers that made me sceptical. But we must spare no effort which might prevent the appalling catastrophe you fear.' Next moment he was giving gruff instructions about mustering despatch riders, and summoning numerous members of his staff.

When he hung up, Verney said, 'It will take several hours to circulate these things, so we had better get some sleep. But I would like to spend the night as near to the possible scene of action as I can. Where would be the most central place for a move either way into the mountains.'

'Interlaken,' Fratelli replied before the Police Chief had a chance to speak. 'It is only about fifteen kilometres from the Jungfrau, and that mountain forms the centre of the main Alpine chain. We will go to the Victoria-Jungfrau. Permit, please.' He picked up one of Tauber's telephones, put a call through to the hotel and a few minutes later reported, 'The manager apologizes that all his best rooms are full, but I have told him that we require only rooms in which to sleep.'

Knowing that such solid types as Tauber were often the most thorough when they got down to a job, and satisfied that he now really meant business, C.B. asked that any news should at once be relayed to him at the Victoria-Jungfrau, then he and his party went down with Fratelli to the Commandante's car.

From Berne they took the road south through a shallow valley for eighteen miles to Thun at the head of Lake Thuner, then for another eighteen miles followed the south shore of the lake as it curved gradually eastward. There was no moon and the stars gave only sufficient light for them to get, first, an impression of country similar to that through which earlier they had passed that evening and, later, stretches of dark water glimpsed between black patches formed by clumps of trees. In the villages few lights were now showing and when they reached the palatial Victoria-Jungfrau it was well after midnight.

In the hotel, blissfully unaware that this might be their last night on earth, many of the younger guests had been dancing. The band had not long stopped playing and there were still quite a number of groups in the lounge, chatting and laughing over last drinks before going up to bed. Few of them even glanced at the little cluster of new arrivals as an under-manager led them through to the restaurant and had a corner of it re-lit for them to make good their missed dinner by a late supper.

Over it, while scarcely noticing what they ate, they speculated in low voices on how long it would take Lothar to adapt the bomb war-head for use on his rocket. All of them hoped fervently that it would take several days, but to have assembled a rocket up in a mountain cave showed that Lothar had either become, or had working for him, a highly skilled engineer; and as by morning it would be forty-eight hours since he had arrived in Switzerland with it, they had to face the fact that he might already have completed the work.

With the exception of Fratelli, all of them were dog-tired and it seemed to Barney that he had only just put out his bedside light when C.B., clad in pants and an overcoat, was shaking him awake.

'Up you get, young feller,' he said. 'Your idea of stencilling Otto's sky-line sketch and circulating it has worked. The local Police Chief has just had word and brought it himself. Several bright boys in the upper Rhone valley are prepared to swear that the central peak in the sketch is the south-west aspect of the Finsteraarhorn.'

As Barney tumbled out of bed, C.B. went on. 'A sergeant at a village called Lax has actually identified the cable railway. Apparently it was a private venture financed in the 'thirties by a crazy Dutchman. He believed that there were valuable mineral deposits in the upper part of the mountains and had the railway constructed up to the cave, with the idea that it would be a good base from which to conduct his operations. There are rare minerals that can be worked up there but the payload was not sufficient to meet the cost of the labour; so the company went bust. The railway has been derelict until a few months ago. Then some solicitors in Zurich, acting for an Hungarian, acquired it for a song. The story was that he intended to build a small chalet restaurant up on the ledge as an attraction for tourists; but the locals say that he is throwing away his money, because it is so far from any of the main tourist resorts.'

The management had supplied Verney's party with toothbrushes and toilet things from the hotel barber's shop, but no time could be spared for shaving. After a quick wash the five men scrambled into their clothes and assembled down in the front hall. It was a little after six, so the staff were already busy cleaning the public rooms, and the Interlaken Chief of Police, a tall, wiry, brown-faced man of forty, whose name was Jodelweiss, had ordered coffee and brodchen for them. Quickly they gulped down the steaming brew and, still gnawing at the crisp fresh rolls stuffed with smoked ham, they followed him outside.

Two cars with police chauffeurs were already waiting there, and there were four more on the road outside filled with police. As they followed Jodelweiss out to the leading cars he was speaking over his shoulder.

'Unfortunately, gentlemen, this place is in a valley on the far side of the great barrier. We shall cross it by the Grimsel Pass -I hope. Normally the pass is not open for another three weeks but this year spring has come unusually early so I think we shall get through. The only alternatives are a long detour to the north, by way of the Susten and Oberalp passes, which are just as likely still to be blocked, or to the south right round by way of Saanen, Aigle, Martigny-Ville, Sion and Brig, but that would mean a run of two hundred and fifty kilometres. If we can cross the Grimsel it is only a third of that distance and we should be there in about three hours; so I feel it is well worth the attempt.'

Since time was so important the others agreed with him and quickly settled themselves in the two cars. As they pulled the rugs over their knees, the klaxons shattered the morning silence and the cavalcade roared away past the still closed jewellers, patisseries, creamery, lace and woodworkers' shops which later in the day would attract many of the temporary inhabitants of this little town that enjoyed such a picturesque setting.

For the first fifteen miles the road followed the north shore of Interlaken's other great lake, the Brienzer See; and now in the early morning light they could appreciate the loveliness of the pale spring green of the beech trees seen against a background of dark pines across a sheet of placid water, beyond which lay range after range of snow-capped mountains.

At the lake's end another seven miles through meadows again dotted with plum, pear and apricot trees in bloom brought them to Meiringen. Beyond the town the road rose sharply, running parallel to the valley of the Aar, through dark gorges, occasional breaks in which offered wonderful vistas of forest and mountain. Ahead on their right reared up, to disappear in clouds, the vast bulk of the Wetterhorn, and to their left those of the Sustenhorn and Dammastock.

Between Guttannen and Hendegg the narrow curving way increased in steepness. The vegetation became arctic in character, on the roadside were high banks of snow and the branches of the trees bent under the weight of it. Still higher up the road became a twisting culvert cut through great cliffs of light-coloured polished granite, and a fresh fall of snow that had not yet been cleared by the snow ploughs brought the car's speed down to near foot pace. But to their relief they got through and gained the top of the pass. From it a marvellous vista spread before them ~ the sparkling blue lakes of Grimsel and Raterichboden, retained by their huge dams and the miles-wide glacier from which the Rh6ne rises; then, far below, the green meadows of the valley that the river watered and, away in the distance to their right, the mighty cloud-enshrouded peak of the Finsteraarhorn.

For a few miles the road corkscrewed downwards until they reached the valley with its narrow rushing river and the road and railway that ran beside it. On the valley road were halted a long line of military vehicles - jeeps, light tanks and a small type of snow cat.

As Inspector Jodelweiss's car approached, a short, wiry, leather-faced officer waved it to a halt. When it drew up beside him he said, 'I am Brigadier Stulich, commanding the garrison at Andermatt. I received a signal that an emergency has arisen in which troops may be needed, and orders that a mixed force should rendezvous with you here. I decided to bring them myself. Inform me, please, of the situation and your requirements.'

Jodelweiss introduced the Brigadier to Verney, who was seated behind him, and Verney said, 'Please order your men to follow our cars, Sir, then get in with us. I will explain as we go. Every minute we can save is of importance.'

The Brigadier gave the order to an officer who was standing just behind him, then squeezed into the back of the car with Verney and Fratelli. As they drove on, the former, now refraining from any mention of Satanism, gave the soldier particulars of the threatened danger which, when he learned of it, made even this tough-looking character draw in a sharp breath.

The going was much easier now as the valley road was almost straight, and for fifteen miles they ran down a succession of gentle slopes, passing again through neat villages and between meadows where cattle grazed placidly among golden seas of dandelions. When they entered Lax it was a quarter past eight; so in spite of the long climb and their slow going through the pass they had done the fifty mile journey in just under two hours.

In Lax, outside the village police station, the Sergeant who had reported the cable-railway built by the Dutch mineral prospector in the 'thirties was waiting for them. He was an elderly man with a grey walrus moustache, but bright-eyed and alert. Jodelweiss, the Brigadier, Verney, Fratelli, Barney, Richter and Otto all scrambled out of the two leading cars and crowded round him.

Although still ignorant of the reason for the enquiry circulated the previous night from police headquarters at Berne, he had not let the grass grow under his feet, but at dawn had set off on a reconnaissance. At a hamlet up in the valley where the cable railway was situated, but about five kilometres below it, he had learned that work had been proceeding on the railway for some weeks. During the winter the villagers seldom went so far up the valley, but a number of them had seen aircraft fly in and had assumed that these were bringing the materials with which it was rumoured a buffet to attract tourists was to be built at the top of the railway. The Sergeant had pressed on and found the hangar, but it was securely locked and he had not been able to find out if there was a 'plane housed in it.

Bumping and skidding on his motor cycle he had, soon after seven o'clock, reached the engine-house. Inside it five Chinese, all of whom he described as of the coolie type, had been squatting on the floor of a common living and bunk room eating breakfast. But none of them could answer his questions and it seemed that they could speak only their own language. By signs he had then indicated that he wanted to be taken up to the cave, but they had shaken their heads and begun to show hostility; so he had had no option but to return to Lax.

Immediately the group about him had heard his story Jodelweiss gave him a place in the leading car. The others re-distributed themselves, then the cavalcade set off again, now heading almost due north along a rough road that led up into the mountains, and on which, the Sergeant said, about twelve kilometres distant lay the cable railway.

As the cars wound in and out among the foothills of the chain C.B. wondered anxiously if the old policeman had not done more harm than good by his reconnaissance.

Up till an hour ago, unless Lothar had been keeping an occult watch on Otto, he could not have been aware that they had traced him to Switzerland; but if the Chinese labourers had reported the Sergeant's visit that might have aroused Lothar's suspicions. With luck he would assume that only chance or a routine round had brought a local policeman to the engine-house, but his psychic perceptions being so acute it was possible that he would deduce a warning from it. If so, he was now overlooking their approach and, awful thought, if he had his rocket ready, that might precipitate his launching of it.

When they reached the hamlet Jodelweiss spoke into the car radio. He ordered one of the police cars behind them to stop, and its crew to search the hamlet in case any of the men from the engine-house or cave should have come down there since the Sergeant's visit, and be temporarily hiding in one of the barns. A few kilometres further on, as they came opposite the aircraft hangar, he detached another squad for a similar purpose.

All of them were now craning forward in their seats to catch the first glimpse of the cable railway up which forty-eight hours earlier the stolen war-head had been carried. At length they rounded a last bend and came in full view of it. Half a mile ahead lay the engine-house. Beyond it, in the distance, far up the valley and on its opposite side from the railway, a little group of figures were moving. They were making their way up a broad gully towards a dip in the ridge and were visible only because they had already passed the snow line.

The Brigadier spoke into the walkie-talkie he was carrying, ordering two jeeps filled with ski-troops to go after them and bring them in; but the sight of the group, which was so obviously making off, was enough to tell Verney that his fears had been well founded. The Sergeant's visit two hours earlier must have alerted Lothar to the fact that Switzerland was being combed for him. Since then, no doubt, he would have used his psychic powers to detect and observe the advancing column of police and troops.

Two minutes later the leading cars pulled up outside the engine-house. Their occupants tumbled out. Armed police and troops dashed inside. A Lieutenant emerged again almost at once and shouted, 'The place is empty, but the cage is down here.'

C.B. was staring after the tiny figures that stood out against the snow, and wondering now if Lothar was one of them. Barney tugged at his sleeve and cried, 'Come on, the cabin's here! Come on, or there won't be room for us in it.'

'Half-a-mo', partner,' C.B. replied. 'The bird we are after may have fled the nest. Maybe he's one of those little moving dots up there.'

'He'd never have abandoned his rocket at this stage,' Barney argued quickly. 'I swear he'd die rather. And if... if Mary's not dead, she will be with him.'

'If the rocket was all fixed to go, he might have. He could have left it with a time fuse attached to launch it. Anyhow, the rocket is first priority. These cable-railway cages usually hold only four, and the Brigadier told me that he had been ordered to bring explosive experts with him. I'm sorry, Barney, but we must let them go ahead so that they may have the best possible chance to get at that war-head in time to dismantle it. But Lothar is our pigeon, and getting him our best hope of saving Mary. If he is one of those dots up there we must go after him.'

With a murmured apology Barney almost snatched a pair of field-glasses from an officer who was standing nearby. Swiftly he focused them on the distant figures and, after a moment, said, 'There are seven of them. That is two in addition to the five Chinks that the Sergeant found down here in the engine-house. None of them looks like a woman; but in those clothes one can't tell. Anyhow, Colonel Washington's not one of them. I'm sure of that because of his height.'

At that moment there came the sudden crack and roar of an explosion. Its blast flung them both forward on their knees. As they picked themselves up they looked round to find that the engine-house was now a smoking ruin. Shouts and screams were coming from it. Troops and police were running to the assistance of their wounded comrades. For a few minutes everything was confusion.

As the smoke above the wrecked building cleared Barney suddenly shouted, 'Look! Look! There he is. The explosion has brought the murdering swine out to see the results of his handiwork.'

Following Barney's pointing finger, C.B. saw that a figure had emerged from the cave and was now standing on the edge of the broad ledge, looking down through a pair of glasses at the scene of havoc. He, too, had no doubt that it was Lothar.

Richter staggered up to them, his face blackened, his eyebrows singed and his uniform torn.

'What happened?' Verney asked him.

The American was still panting. 'That devil had booby-trapped both the cage and the engine. I chanced to be looking towards the winding gear as a corporal pushed over the lever. Both bombs went off simultaneously. The Brigadier and Jodelweiss were both in the cage. With them and in the freight compartment they had several sappers; bomb experts. All of them are to hell and gone. So are six or eight fellers who were standing round the engine. I was lucky. I couldn't get a place in the cage but I was standing alongside it by the opening. So I was blown clear.'

As he finished speaking Fratelli limped up to them. He had been outside the building but near it, and a flying length of wooden rafter had caught him a nasty blow on his left leg. Otto had escaped altogether, as he had been well away from the engine-house and, already certain in his own mind that Lothar was still in the cave, was staring up at it.

Within a few minutes the last of the wounded had been rescued from the smouldering debris, and a tall, thin Major came up to them. The greater part of the troops were his own men and, now that the Brigadier had been killed, he was the senior officer present. After expressing his fury that the police should have allowed them to walk into such a trap, he demanded to know the object of the operation.

In a low voice Fratelli told him, upon which he promptly declared his intention of having his tanks train their guns on the cave and shell it to blazes. The others swiftly implored him not to, as they feared that the concussion of the bursting shells might set off the H bomb war-head that they believed to be at the far end of the tunnel. It was Verney who said,

'There is only one thing for it now, Major. We have got to get up there by climbing; and the more of us who make the attempt the better, because he may have some means of inflicting casualties on us as we go up. I suggest that you should form your men into groups and send each group up by a different route. Some should certainly be sent round the shoulder of the mountain so as to work their way up, if they can, to the far entrance of the tunnel that can't be seen from here.'

After a moment he added, 'Although we are not equipped for climbing, my friends and I naturally wish to be in on this too. As a number of your men have been wounded perhaps you would be good enough to let us have the loan of their gear.'

The Major agreed, said that he would lead an attack round the shoulder of the mountain on the other entrance of the cave, and detailed a blond, pink-cheeked Lieutenant to look after them. Already most of the injured had had their wounds dressed and, wrapped in blankets, were being made as comfortable as possible in jeeps for swift removal to hospital; so the young Lieutenant was soon able to collect ski-suits, snow-shoes, woollen gloves and caps, and pistols for his charges. Two tracked vehicles came up; the Lieutenant, C.B. and Otto joined the crew of one, and Barney, Richter and Fratelli that of the other.

As they set off Barney glanced at his watch. It had been just on nine o'clock when they had driven up to the engine-house; it was now nearly half past.

It was a beautiful May morning. By this time the sun was well above the ridge to the east, lightening the tender green of the meadows in the valley bottom, turning the flying drops of the cascading river that ran through it into sparkling diamonds and making the snow on the higher levels crumpled sheets of dazzling whiteness.

In less than ten minutes the tracked vehicles, which possessed a quite amazing capability to travel up steep slopes, had negotiated the boulder-strewn hillside of coarse grass and carried them up to the fringe of the forest belt. But it was too thick for them to find a way through it. Leaving the vehicles, the two parties and half a dozen others, on average a hundred yards apart, entered the trees and continued the upward climb on foot.

For most of the way the gradient was not less than one in five, and a carpet of pine needles made the going so slippery that it added greatly to their exertions. As they advanced they passed patches of half-melted snow, and every few moments there came a loud rustle, or a 'plop', as the sun's rays caused great lumps of it on the upper branches of the trees partially to thaw and fall to the ground.

When they came out from the trees Barney was sweating profusely, but his two amateur companions were in a far worse case. Eyeing the snowfield, that now lay before them like the roof of a gargantuan house, plump, forty-year-old Colonel Richter frankly confessed that he was in no condition to face it, and declared that if he made the attempt he would only prove a drag on the others. Fratelli, too, decided to throw his hand in, although only because his injured leg was paining him so badly. The others, now reduced to a team of five, roped themselves together, with a Sergeant leading and Barney two from the end. Then they set off again.

Some distance to their left the Lieutenant's team had also emerged from the trees, but its 'passengers' were in better shape. Otto had done quite a lot of climbing on his holidays in Switzerland; while Verney, although he had done no climbing for several years, was an old hand and considerably stronger than anyone might have supposed from a casual glance at his lanky, stooping figure.

Slowly the two teams wound their way upwards, while others to right and left followed other, apparently possible, ways up the mountain side. It was a little after half past ten when the walkie-talkie of the young Lieutenant who was leading C.B.'s team began to crackle. Signalling the string of men behind him to halt, he listened for a few moments, then he looked back and called down to Verney.

'This is for you, Colonel, and for all concerned in the capture of Lothar Khune. It is relayed by our mobile radio unit down in the valley from Police Headquarters, Berne. Soon after ten o'clock Khune put out a long broadcast in Russian and followed it by one in English. He has announced that he, Lothar Khune, is taking steps to-day to bring a New Order into the world for the glory of his master, Prince Lucifer. That an upheaval is necessary in which many must die, but that those who survive will for ever bless the name of Satan. He intends to set the ball rolling which will lead to the establishment of this new order at twelve o'clock precisely.' The Lieutenant paused, then added, 'I don't know what you think, but he sounds completely crazy to me.'

Verney did not reply. By all normal standards, of course, Lothar was crazy, but according to his own lights he was behaving with impeccable logic, and his statement had to be regarded as made by a man terrifyingly and damnably sane.

But that thought no more than flashed across C.B.'s mind. He was gazing upward at the ever steeper ascent, glinting in the sunshine with snow and ice, made perilous by jutting rocks, sheer cliffs and, in places, overhang. So far they had barely accomplished half the climb. By far the most difficult half was yet to come. Since Lothar meant to launch his rocket at midday they had barely an hour and a half left. His heart contracting with despair, C.B. forced himself to realize that they could not possibly reach the cave in time.

CHAPTER XXVI DEADLINE - TWELVE NOON

The sight of the Great Ram advancing noiselessly down the tunnel seemed to turn Mary's blood to water and to paralyse her limbs. For a few seconds she remained motionless. With what felt like a physical wrench she tore her glance away and tapped sharply on one of the fuel drums. The sound might easily have been made by a falling icicle thawed out at the entrance to the cave by the heat coming from inside it; but Wash heeded her warning signal. Stooping, he swiftly thrust in among the paraphernalia at the base of the rocket the tool he was holding.

Kneeling in the narrow, pitch dark space between the two piles of fuel drums, Mary held her breath. It seemed to her certain that the Great Ram must have sensed her presence even if he did not see her and, halting in his stride, would turn and rend her. But on coming opposite the drums he had rounded the bend of the tunnel sufficiently to catch sight of Wash. His harsh voice cut the stillness.

'I had a feeling that you were here. What are you doing?'

With a laconic calmness for which Mary gave Wash full marks, his reply came back. 'Taking a look-see at the rocket. You're an expert on these things, Exalted One, and I'm a babe. All the same, I couldn't get it out of my mind this evening that we've got it oriented wrong.'

The Great Ram had walked on towards him. Now that they were talking together Mary knew that she ought not to lose a moment in obeying Wash's orders to leave them to it and get back to her cabin. If the Great Ram chanced to look round he would see her, but that risk had to be taken as the lesser than his yet discovering her among the fuel drums and realizing that she had been lurking there as a look-out for Wash. Quickly she slipped off her shoes. Then, summoning her resolution, she took the plunge.

As she tiptoed forward her spine seemed to creep. Every second she expected an occult force to be directed at her back - a lightning flash that would scorch, char and utterly destroy her. Into her terrified mind there came again a picture of the Black Imp that had materialized from the Great Ram the first time she had seen him. For one awful moment the sound of the drips from the melting ice at the entrance to the cave seemed to take on a new rhythm and she thought they were the swift, light footfalls of the Imp coming after her. Suppressing a scream of terror, she broke into a run. It was only then she suddenly became aware that she was well round the bend of the tunnel and so must have escaped discovery.

When she reached her cabin she was trembling from head to foot. In the doorway she paused to look back, fearful now that Wash's bluff would fail and that the Great Ram would kill him. If that happened she knew that she would receive short shrift. Any attempt to defend herself would be hopeless but, if she could take him by surprise, there was just a chance that she might inflict some serious injury on him before his terrible power as a destroyer could take effect. But for that she must have a weapon. How, where, could she get hold of one? The kitchen was only thirty feet away. There might be something there.

She tiptoed along, and peeped in. It was deserted but still faintly lit by the small blue pilot bulb. From the cabin beyond it came the snoring of the Chinese cook. As she looked quickly round her glance fell on a saw-edged bread knife that had been left on the table. She would have preferred something more lethal; but it would have taken time to hunt through the drawers, and she dared not linger there. Snatching up the bread knife, she ran back to her own cabin, slipped inside, and shut the door. Still trembling, she threw down her shoes, stepped out of her skirt and, getting into the bunk, pulled the blankets over her.

For some minutes she lay there, her mind a prey to despair and fear - despair of getting the better of the Great Ram and sabotaging the rocket, and fear that his psychic sense would tell him that had been Wash's intention. Then she heard the muffled sound of footsteps and voices outside in the tunnel. She could not catch what was said but they were not raised in anger; so it seemed that Wash had got away with his bluff. Relief surged through her at the thought that he was not dead; that she had not been left alone with the Great Ram and was about to become his next victim.

Wash entered the cabin next to hers. She heard its door slam and a little shuffling, then silence fell. Now she was seized with the urge to talk to him, to find out what had passed between him and the Great Ram, and do her utmost to persuade him to make a further attempt later in the night to sabotage the rocket. But she knew she must control her impatience. To leave her cabin while the Great Ram was still about might prove fatal.

It was as well that she waited. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed. There came a faint sound and she knew that someone had opened the door of her cabin. A sixth sense told her that it was the Great Ram and warned her to keep perfectly still. She felt certain that he had looked in to make sure that she was there and asleep. Now, she thanked her stars that she had obeyed Wash and returned to her cabin instead of remaining among the fuel drums. If her cabin had been empty and she had been found near the rocket, she knew that she would never have been able to stand up to the Great Ram's questioning.

He took a step forward into the cabin. Her heart contracted with a spasm of fear. She was the useless member of the party and he had good cause to hate her. Perhaps he had not just come to see if she was asleep, but had decided that the time had come to rid himself of her. She was still holding the bread knife. Instinctively her grasp tightened on its handle. Had he touched her she would have flung back the blanket and lunged blindly at him. But after a moment he stepped back, murmured a few sentences of what sounded like gibberish, and closed the door.

Sweating from every pore she continued to lie there, still not quite certain that he had left her. It seemed an age before she could summon up the courage to turn her head a little sideways and steal a swift glance from beneath still lowered eyelids. She let her breath go in a great sigh. Except for herself, the faint blue light showed the cabin to be empty.

Once more she resigned herself to wait with patience, until it could be reasonably assumed that the coast was clear. Every few minutes she looked at her wrist watch. Its hands seemed to move with incredible slowness, but minute by minute an hour crept by. Getting out of the bunk, she put on her skirt and cautiously opened the door. No sound came to her and momentarily her hopes soared again. By playing on Wash's resentment at having been tricked by the Great Ram and doing her utmost to strengthen the feeling she had instilled into him that, as a Satanist, he had backed the wrong horse, she might yet induce him to make another attempt to sabotage the rocket and, this time, perhaps they would succeed.

Next moment her hopes fell to zero. The door stood open but she could not pass through the doorway. The Great Ram had erected an invisible barrier there that held her a prisoner more surely than any locks and bolts. Strive as she would, just as had been the case at the Cedars, she could not put a foot over the threshold.

***

Only the hands of Mary's watch told her that she had got through the night. Lying fully dressed on her bunk, through parts of it she had dozed; but she had the impression that she had not dropped off, even for a few moments, and certainly her brain had never ceased to revolve round and round the coming day and the terrible fate that it might usher in for millions of helpless people.

On finding that she could not leave her cabin, she had thought of trying to knock Wash up so that he would leave his and come round to her. But the partition that separated the two cabins was made of thick timber. With the handle of the breadknife she had rapped a tattoo on it, but without result. An hour had elapsed since the Great Ram had left them, and from experience she knew how soundly Wash slept. It was evident that he had already fallen into one of his heavy slumbers, and that to rouse him would need violent hammering. The noise that would make would, she felt sure, bring the Great Ram on the scene, and that she dared not risk.

The fact that he had erected an occult barrier to prevent her from leaving her cabin she took to be a clear indication that Wash had not altogether got away with his bluff about his concern regarding the alignment of the rocket. In some way the Great Ram's suspicions had been aroused and, she guessed, they took the form of suspecting the truth - that she was endeavouring to turn Wash against him, and influencing him to interfere in some way with the rocket's proper functioning.

Wretchedly she had flung herself on her bunk, and endeavoured alternately to devise a means of wrecking the Great Ram's plans when morning came, or giving in to her tired mind and, sloughing off all responsibility, get to sleep. She had succeeded in neither.

Soon after seven o'clock she heard the clatter of pans in the galley, but the Chinese cook did not come to call her as on the previous day. She got up, tidied herself as well as she could and again tried to leave her cabin, but found that the invisible barrier still held her back. Half an hour later she caught sounds of Wash stirring in the cabin next door. Shortly afterwards it was swiftly conveyed to her that he was trapped too. She could hear him shouting:

'What goes on here! Master! Exalted One! I'd bust right through this had any lesser Mage corralled me in. But why put me behind the bars? Come on now! Let me outa here. Let me out, I say!'

To his shouts there came no reply. In vain Mary tried to attract his attention by calling to him, but his angry bellows drowned her cries. Nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed before he seemed to resign himself to having been made a prisoner, and fell silent. She seized the opportunity to beat a loud tattoo on the board wall that divided their cabins. After a few minutes he responded with heavy thumps. The planks in the partition were thick, but there were thin chinks between them. By enunciating clearly in a low voice that was not much above a whisper, each could hear what the other said.

Both, by similar occult spells, had been made prisoners in their cabins. Wash said of the previous night that the Great Ram had not appeared to suspect him of a double cross. When he had suggested that the rocket was completely out of alignment if the intention was for it to fall on Saanen, the Great Ram had replied that he had changed his mind and decided to send it in the opposite direction, so that it should fall in the more sparsely populated Bernese Oberland in the neighbourhood of the little town of Ilanz.

That was all very well but, while Saanen lay to the west, Ilanz lay to the north-east, not many degrees off a direct course to Moscow; and, having seen the route and calculations in the Great Ram's office for the rocket's flight, Wash had not been taken in by this plausible excuse for its reorientation.

He added that both their lives now hung on the Great Ram's having planned that he should be flown out of Switzerland once he had launched his rocket. Where to, remained a matter for anything but happy speculation. Certainly not to Moscow, which by the time an aircraft could reach it would be under heavy atomic attack from the Western Allies; and equally not to any city in Europe, as they would be going up in smoke under hits - or be rendered untenable by near-misses - from Russia's atomic bombardment. Their destination, Wash and Mary unhappily agreed while hoarsely whispering through the chinks between the boards, was probably India or China, and neither had the least desire to go permanently to either.

No one summoned them to breakfast, so they sat on in their respective cabins, occasionally encouraging one another with a sentence or two spoken through the partition. Then, at a little before nine o'clock, the door of Mary's cabin swung open and, with a sudden renewal of her terror, she saw the Great Ram standing looking at her.

'So you thought you could outwit me by seducing from his allegiance that great oaf next door?' he said in his high, sneering voice. 'You miserable little fool. Know now what you have done. With yesterday my use for him ended. I had intended first thing this morning to let him go off in his aeroplane and take you with him. The two of you have found out my real intentions, but I had meant to give him a good reason for not going to Moscow; and there would have been ample tune for you to be well out over the Mediterranean before I gave Europe over to havoc. Instead I mean to rescind the postponement of your sentence that I agreed to give him. For the last few hours of your life you may also savour the thought that, through you, this lover of your choice is now condemned by me to the hideous death I intend to inflict on you both soon after midday.'

Mary could take little consolation from the thought that Wash was not the 'lover of her choice', so her heart would not be wrung by the knowledge that she had brought about his death. As for herself, she was not afraid to die, but only of the threatened pain. But a quick death, however hideous, might, she thought, be preferable to being carried off into the unknown by Wash, then abandoned by him to suffer disfigurement and a lingering death from the curse that the Great Ram had earlier decreed for her. She dared not raise her eyes to his and continued to sit on the edge of her bunk as he went on.

'Your insolence in believing for one moment that you could interfere with my plans fills me with amazement. That a creature like you, even aided by that backwoods magician you have besotted with your sex, should pit your puny wits against mine is a supreme impertinence.' Suddenly he gave an eerie cackle of high-pitched laughter, and added, 'How little you can understand the power that I wield. I, the Great Ram, have nothing to fear. No, not even when an army is sent against me. Come, I lift the barrier that bars your door. Follow me, and I will show you how I deal with my enemies.'

As he turned away Mary stood up. Whether she would or not she felt a compulsion to leave her cabin and walk down the tunnel after him. He led her out to the rock platform at which the cable railway ended. Pointing across the valley to a group of tiny figures making their way up through the snow towards a low saddle in the opposite range, he said:

'There go Mirkoss, my cook, and the other Chinese I have had working for me here. You see, I have a care for those who serve me faithfully, even if they are no more than slaves. You and that lovelorn fool, Twisting Snake, would also be on your way out of danger now had you not had the impudence to challenge me.'

Mary found her tongue at last, and murmured, 'But why should they have been in danger if they had remained here? When . . . when your rocket lands on Moscow the Russians will fire back at the American cities and those of the N.A.T.O. countries. They won't waste rockets on Switzerland.'

Again he gave his cynical high-pitched laugh. 'Of course, and I too shall be safe among these mountains; but not in this cave. I have a twin brother: a weak fool with whom I long since quarrelled; yet there remains a strong psychic link between us. A clever Englishman named Verney has used him to overlook me. So they are aware of my intentions, and by one means and another have discovered my retreat.'

At this admission, coupled with Verney's name, Mary's heart gave a bound. Perhaps the spool from the tape recorder that she had thrust on Barney had reached the Colonel and contributed to the hunt that must have started for the missing war-head soon after Wash had flown off with it. If the spool had reached Verney, Ratnadatta, Abaddon, Honorius and the rest of that murderous crew would by now have been arrested. So she would have succeeded in avenging poor Teddy after all. But had she? Within a few hours of the Great Ram launching his rocket London would be laid in ruins. Innocent and guilty alike would perish by the hundreds of thousands. The Satanists of Cremorne would have become cinders long before they could be brought to trial.

She knew that she and Wash would be given no further chance to sabotage the rocket. Now, she could only pray that some fault in its mechanism, some act of God, or even some overweening vanity on the part of the Great Ram himself, would delay the launching. The knowledge that Verney was on his way, and Barney too, perhaps, threw her into a fresh form of agony - for she felt that the strain of waiting and wondering if they would arrive on the scene in time to save the situation must soon prove unendurable.

Hardly had she thought of that before she was relieved from having to face it. Exclaiming 'Here they come! Here they come! I knew they could not be far off,' the Great Ram pointed down into the valley.

At the same moment the distant sound of motor engines was wafted up to her and she saw what seemed from that height a column of toy vehicles emerge from round the shoulder of the mountain. Cars, motor cycles, jeeps and tanks skidded and bumped along the uneven track until thirty or forty of them were visible. When the leading cars reached the engine-house they pulled up with a jerk. A score of figures tumbled out of them and ran towards the building.

The Great Ram gave a sinister chuckle. 'Now, little fool, you shall see how I deal with forces far stronger than yourself when they are brought against me.'

Instantly her joy at knowing friends to be so near was changed to awful apprehension, for it seemed clear that he had already planned to use some form of his evil power for their destruction. Yet he uttered no curse and made no gesture.

Suddenly there came a bright flash, a tongue of flame leapt skywards, and a moment later the roar of the explosion followed to echo and echo back and forth across the valley. Where the engine house had stood there was now a dense cloud of smoke and from it came up thinly the cries of the injured and the dying.

In Mary horror temporarily drove out fear. Swinging round she faced the Great Ram and screamed at him, 'You fiend! You fiend! May Heaven blast you for this murder!'

At that moment, had she had the bread knife with her she would have tried to kill him; but he had come for her so unexpectedly that she had had to leave it hidden under the blanket of her bunk. His only reaction was a scornful laugh, followed by a glance that instantly quelled her and forced her to lower her gaze.

'Come now,' he said abruptly. 'I have work to do, and you shall see me do it. Since you have shown yourself to be one of those who follow the pathetic slave religion started by the imposter Christ, it pleases me that you should hear me announce the death knell of Christianity. If He had the power to preserve it, He obviously would, but He has not; and I intend to show those among His followers who may survive how ill-placed their faith in this self-styled "Saviour of the World" has been. Go in now. You know the wireless cabin. Wait for me there while I watch for a little longer the consternation of those puny creatures down in the valley.'

She knew she must obey him, yet she still had a kick left in her and as she turned to re-enter the cave she burst out, 'You've wrecked the railway, but you've only killed a few of them. And it's certain that with those tanks there are mountain troops. They'll climb up here. For every one you kill they'll call up a dozen reinforcements. You've left it too late to escape. They are bound to get you.'

He tossed his head with the old arrogant gesture. 'Little fool, your persistent blindness to my power becomes almost amusing. Mirkoss and the Chinese I had to send away, otherwise they would have been trapped. But I, the Great Ram, am not as other men. When I will I can call down the cloud to hide the entrances to this cave and halt the climbers, unless they are prepared to risk death with every step they take. The cloud, though, will form no barrier to my sight, and I have long since learned to levitate myself; so I can pass over crevasses that no guide would attempt to cross. I am also impervious to cold; so I shall go upward and make my way unchallenged over the range into another valley where I have already made preparations for my reception.'

To that she could make no reply. It was clear that he had thought of everything. Stumbling a little, she made her way to the wireless cabin and threw herself into a chair there.

The thought that now obsessed her was that Barney might have been with Colonel Verney in the engine-house when it had blown up. She was past tears, but her very heart-strings were wrung with the visual image of her gay, laughter-loving Barney as a broken, twisted body being carried on a stretcher from that still-smoking ruin down in the valley. Her belief that he despised her made no difference to her love for him. And since she had realized, from what Wash had told her, that he must be one of Colonel Verney's young men, although she could not begin to account for such a strange metamorphosis, her love for him, instead of being only an unreasoning passion, had been sanctified by respect and admiration.

For what seemed a long time she sat crouched, wringing her hands, in the wireless cabin. It drifted through her mind that, by ripping at the wires and bending the terminals, she might put the set out of action. But a moment's thought told her that whether he made his proposed broadcast to the world or not did not matter in the least, as that had no bearing on his ability to launch the rocket.

At last he joined her. Waving her from the chair, he sat down in it and began to fiddle with the apparatus. She stood in the doorway, no longer feeling a compulsion to remain with him, but too mentally exhausted to make the effort necessary to break away.

He spent a good ten minutes tuning in to the wave length he required, then began to speak in what she imagined to be Russian. That he should have wished her to remain to hear him she now guessed to be due to his inordinate vanity's demanding the presence of an audience, however humble or unable to appreciate what he was saying, to witness this epoch-making declaration he was making to the world.

Actually he was telling the Russians that their leaders had betrayed the masses by abandoning the Marxist faith of equality achieved through violence, and had become money-grubbing bourgeois intellectuals. He announced the imminent destruction of the regime - although he made no mention of his rocket or the way in which he meant to bring that about - and told the Russians that those who survived the purge he meant to initiate would be given a new chance to be a law unto themselves and enjoy to the utmost all the pleasures this world had to offer. He then went on to talk of himself and the part that, under Satan, he would play in the New Order that was to emerge from the Old.

Although Mary could not understand one word he said, she felt sure that from his arrogant, ranting tone - which reminded her vaguely of the broadcasts she had heard when a child, made by Hitler - anyone who was listening to him would take him for a madman. That he was mad she now had no doubt, but that did not make him any the less dangerous.

Abruptly he ceased his tirade and again spent some minutes tuning in to a wave length that he evidently considered the best on which to convey his message to the United States and Britain.

He announced himself clearly as Professor Lothar Khune addressing the English-speaking world. To hold the attention of listeners who had chanced to hear him he added that most of them would be dead before the day was out. His theme then was that the Christian heresy had inflicted on the world many generations of senseless self-denial, made an unnatural virtue of celibacy, and denied the people the joy in life which was their birthright; that to bring about a reversal of this unhappy state of things it was necessary for him, Lothar Khune, to act with complete ruthless-ness. To destroy the Christian Church root and branch he must also do away with the established governments that supported it. He went on to state that, as they could read in their Bibles, God had given Prince Lucifer this world as His Province. Then he declared that Satan had become weary of the disloyalty of his subjects, so intended to punish them through his servant, Lothar Khune, with a great affliction; but those who survived might look forward to a new era of true freedom and happiness. Finally he declared that on behalf of His Lord Satan he intended to initiate the beginning of the New Era this very day at twelve noon precisely.

Chilled to the heart, Mary heard him out. She knew that almost everyone who had listened to his broadcasts would regard him as a harmless lunatic. But he was not. That he had made them could be due only to a childish vanity - the urge to let people know that it was he, Lothar Khune, who had decreed death for millions and an end to all existing institutions. But he was no mentally ill-adjusted adolescent or madman who did not know what he was doing. He meant every word he said and, short of a miracle, at midday he would launch his rocket.

So pleased was he with himself in his role as arbiter of the fate of the world that, having concluded his broadcast, he turned and actually smiled at Mary. As she quickly averted her eyes, he said: 'Twelve noon. That is the time I had already decided upon and I shall not have to advance it by one minute, although by now everything the governments of Europe and America can do against me is being done. The Alpine troops may burst their hearts in their efforts to reach this cave, but when midday comes they will still have several hundred feet to climb. See how perfectly the Lord Satan times matters to ensure the accomplishment of His work and the protection of His servant. Yet you, a woman, a mere piece of flesh designed only as a plaything for men, thought you could thwart me.'

He paused a moment, then added with sudden sarcasm, 'That you are flesh and entirely earthbound reminds me of my duties as a host. Going without breakfast must have made you hungry. It is, too, an ancient custom that anyone condemned to death should be allowed to choose his last meal. In the store next door to the kitchen you will find a great variety of tinned foods. Take what you like for yourself and your leman. Cook him a meal if you wish, while I take my meteorological observations and make the final adjustments to the rocket. You have a little over an hour and a half, which should be ample. He will not be able to cross the threshold of his cabin to eat it. If I removed the invisible barrier I erected across the doorway he might attempt to make further trouble, and it would be an annoyance if I were distracted from my calculations to render him harmless again. But you can pass the food in to him or, if he prefers, give him enough spirits to make himself drunk.'

Having demonstrated his high good humour by according Mary this cynical permission to make the most of her last hours, he lifted his chin and, without a further glance at her, walked off down the tunnel. Relieved of his icy, intimidating presence, Mary's mind became fluid again and she strove desperately to think how she could best employ the limited freedom that he had so contemptuously granted her.

First she ran out on to the rock platform and gazed down into the valley. Over an hour had elapsed since the engine house had blown up. It was now only a broken empty shell from which faint wisps of smoke curled up. The cars and tanks were scattered irregularly round it, and in little groups among them scores of men were standing, their faces all tilted upward as they watched the mouth of the cave. Nearer, she could see several teams of climbers spread out along the mountain side. They had evidently only just emerged from the forest belt and were now slowly snaking their way up across the lowest snowfield.

Mary knew nothing about mountaineering, but even the blanket of snow could not disguise the precipitous nature of the cliffs below her. In some places they were sheer, in others slopes led only to outjutting cols that barred further ascent. That there were ways up was evident from the fact that years earlier engineers had scaled these heights and erected the pylons that carried the cables of the now useless mountain railway. But a few moments' anxious scrutiny of the scene was enough to convince her that the Great Ram was right. Two hours at the very least must elapse before the leading teams of climbers could reach the cave.

Wash, then, remained the only hope.

Turning, she ran down the tunnel to his cabin. Grasping the handle of the door she pulled upon it. The door opened so easily that she staggered backwards. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk with his head buried in his enormous hands. At the sound of the door opening, he looked up. Jumping to his feet, he took a pace forward. His eyes lit up and his mouth expanded in a broad grin. Next moment his eyes showed fear and his mouth sagged. On the threshold he had seemed to trip, his hands came up as though to thrust at something, then he staggered back.

Mary shook her head. 'It's no good. He won't let you out. He's making his final calculations, and does not mean to let you interrupt him. But he said I could bring you things: food, a drink. Would you like a drink?'

'Yeah,' Wash nodded heavily. 'Bourbon. Bring me the bottle.'

The dining cabin was the next beyond his. From it she collected the bottle and brought it back to him. He took a long swig, then asked hoarsely:

'What's he mean to do with me? Guess he smelt a rat after all last night and played me for a sucker. But seems you're in the clear. How come you fooled him? Tell, woman, tell?'

'I didn't,' she replied despondently. 'He let me out only because he looks on me as no more capable of harming him than a housefly. It even amused him to suggest that I should cook you breakfast.'

Wash brightened a little. 'Say, things aren't so bad, then. And I could eat a horse. What are you waiting for?'

She shook her head. 'He meant it only as a horrible joke. He has just announced over the radio to the world that from midday everyone can expect a reign of chaos to begin. Then, as soon as he has launched his rocket, he will settle his score with us.'

'Are you telling me he means to do us in?'

'That's it. Although he pretended not to suspect us last night, he knew all the time that we'd planned to sabotage his rocket. And he no longer has any use for you, because he doesn't mean to leave by 'plane. It's death for both of us unless we can kill him first.'

For a minute they both remained silent, staring into one another's eyes. From about eight o'clock, when he had found himself a prisoner, Wash had decided that it could only be because his treachery had been discovered; but he had counted on still being needed to fly the Great Ram out. Now he realized that, not only was he trapped, he had gambled away his life.

Mary was resigned to losing hers, but still hoped that she could find some means of foiling the Great Ram before he struck her down into oblivion. Alone, she knew herself to be powerless, but if she could free Wash and together they could catch the Great Ram off his guard, they might yet get the better of him.

Suddenly an idea came to her. The occult barrier blocked the doorway of the cabin, but perhaps it did not extend to its sides or roof. In a rush of words she put her idea to Wash. Seizing upon it, he jumped up on the bunk and strove to force up the roofing of the shed. Owing to his great strength the slats ripped from the beams to which they had been nailed, and a gap appeared. But in that part of the cave the rock projected low overhead, so the slat struck against it and the gap where they had broken away was much too narrow for him to crawl through. Yet his effort had proved one thing. He had been able to thrust his hands up through the opening; so no invisible force would have prevented his getting out that way if the gap had been large enough.

Electrified with excitement at the sight of his partial success, Mary cried, 'Try the side wall. Not the one next to the dining cabin. The sideboard backs up against that. You must break through into mine. Throw all your weight against the partition.'

He needed no urging, and charged it with his shoulder. The partition creaked but stood firm. Again and again he threw himself at it, but even under his great weight it did not give an inch. Mary ran back into her cabin and made a quick examination of it. She saw that it was made of stout pine planks that were only about four inches wide, but they were nailed to three-inch square cross battens on her side; so no amount of battering on his could spring the nails that held them. The only hope remaining was to cut a way through them.

Snatching the bread knife from under the blanket of her bunk, she jabbed it into the wood shoulder high, and wriggled it. The result was only a tiny splintered hole and it was obvious that such a tool was hopelessly inadequate for her purpose. All those with which it might have been done speedily were, she knew, in the shed near the rocket, and impossible to get at because the Great Ram was working there. But it struck her that she might find something stronger in the kitchen so, throwing down the bread knife, she ran along to it. The most promising thing she could find was a meat chopper. But after a few blows she abandoned that, as each time she struck with it its blade remained embedded in the wood, and she had difficulty in wrenching it out.

In desperation she reverted to the bread knife and dug frantically at the splintered patch that her blows with the chopper had made. After five or six minutes of stabbing and twisting with the point of the knife, she got the blade through and began to saw sideways with it. As she worked she could have wept with frustration at the seeming hopelessness of the task she had set herself. In ten minutes she had sawed through only an inch and a half of the plank and her wrist was aching intolerably.

Pulling the knife out she darted round with it to Wash and thrust it at him. Easing it into the other side of the slit she had made, he began sawing away with fierce, swift strokes, but he was handicapped by having to work left-handed. Another ten minutes sped by before he had managed to saw right through the four-inch plank.

To get out a piece of the plank another cut had to be made lower down, but while Wash was still working on the first cut Mary had succeeded with the chopper in splintering out another hole eighteen inches below the first.

He got the knife through and continued the painfully slow sawing; meanwhile, she used the chopper to prise the cross-beam a fraction of an inch away from the planks. At last the second cut was completed. He gave a shout, she stood back, then he struck the eighteen-inch length of plank with his fist and it fell at her feet.

So far the job had taken them forty minutes, but now that he was able to get his hands through and grip the sides of the planks the work went much faster. Most men would have found themselves still faced with an hour's work, and perhaps not even then had the strength to force the boards away from the nails that held them; but in Wash's giant arms and shoulders lay the strength of half a dozen men, and after ten minutes of straining, ripping, bashing and kicking, he had made a gap wide enough to force his way through.

Both of them were panting and sweating from their exertions, but he did not pause to rest. Taking her by the arm he hurried her out and turned towards the entrance to the cave served by the cable railway.

Pulling back, she gasped, 'Not that way. He's working on his rocket, making final adjustments to it.'

'To hell with him!' Wash replied tersely. 'We're getting outa here while the going's good.'

'We can't. The cable-railway is no longer working. He blew it up.'

'Then we'll climb down.'

He continued to move forward but she dragged upon his arm. 'Wash, you're crazy! It's like the side of a house. We'd fall and kill ourselves. I've never even climbed down a chalk cliff.'

'Neither have I, but we'll make it someway.'

'There are Alpine troops on their way up, and...'

He halted then, towering above her, and exclaimed, 'Troops? How come?'

'We've been traced from England. The Great Ram told me. He has a twin brother who is psychic, too, and located us here. The valley is full of troops. They must know that it was you who stole the war-head, and they'll have found your 'plane by now. Even if we could get safely down the mountain you couldn't escape. It's certain they'll arrest you.'

'That's bad,' he muttered. 'Still, I'd leifer face a court-martial than the Great Ram. 'Sides, they can only jail me, and the jail's not yet made that could hold me for more than a coupla weeks.'

For a second she hesitated. She dare not tell him about the tape-recorder and confess that she had betrayed him. If she did he might kill her there and then, and if she had to die she still hoped that it would not be uselessly, but in an attempt to thwart the Great Ram. Drawing a deep breath she took the plunge.

'It won't be jail, Wash. The British will hang you.'

'Nerts! They've no jurisdiction over a member of the United States forces.'

'Maybe not, but they'll get you tried for murder.'

'What in heck are you driving at?'

'You remember the detective who came to the Cedars - Lord Larne?'

'Yeah; but we didn't kill him. He made a getaway after you threw that crucifix.'

'I know.' She strove to choose her words carefully now, so as not to incriminate herself. 'But I told you at the time that I knew him - that he had been accepted as a neophyte by the circle at Cremorne. It's certain that your flying out with the war-head will have sent the balloon up. After that Scotland Yard would not have delayed another hour in raiding the Temple. There must be papers there they will have seized, and some of the Brotherhood will have been arrested. Ratnadatta will have been, for certain, because Lord Larne knew him quite well. The odds are he'll turn Queen's Evidence to save his own skin; and he owes you a grudge. He'll put you on the spot as having taken part in the murder of that other police spy. The one you told me about.'

For a moment Wash remained silent, then his dark eyes narrowed. 'You've sure got something there, honey. If the British have bust that Temple open and got Ratnadatta it could be pretty hot for me. Go or stay put it looks as though I'm for it either way.'

His words braced her for her next effort. They showed that he was coming round to where she wanted him; but before she could speak again he gave a sudden laugh and dashed her hopes.

'We've been talking foolish. When the Big Chief lets off his rocket the past will be washed out. Here in Switzerland I guess we'll stand a better chance of survival than most. But Scotland Yard, Ratnadatta, the air base at Fulgoham - they'll mean as little to us as Noah and his Ark. There'll be no one left to indict.'

To Mary it was a body blow; for in the urgency of the moment both of them had failed to take into account the effects of the rocket and now, by doing so, he had nullified all the arguments by which she had been endeavouring to steer him into attacking the Great Ram. Even so, she made a quick recovery.

'Of course; how stupid of me. But it was you who brought the war-head here. You can't get away from that. And the Swiss must know it. If the rocket is fired you will be accounted guilty of mass murder. They'll not try and hang you but tear you limb from limb.'

He passed a hand over his still sweating forehead. 'Sure, sure. I'd not thought of that. Then I'd best remain here. I've got my gun. I'll shoot it out with them as they come up.'

'No,' she cried, 'That would mean death for certain. If you've got the guts, you can still save yourself.'