As De Richleau’s Hispano drew up at the dead end of the dark cul-de-sac in St John’s Wood, Rex slipped out of the car and looked about him. They were shut in by the high walls of neighbouring gardens. Above a blank expanse of brick in which a single, narrow door was visible, the upper stories of Simon’s house showed vague and mysterious among whispering trees.
‘Ugh!’ he exclaimed with a little shudder as a few drops splashed upon his face from the dark branches overhead. ‘What a dismal hole, we might be in a graveyard.’
The Duke pressed the bell, and turning up the sable collar of his coat against a slight drizzle which made the April night seem chill and friendless, he stepped back to get a better view of the premises. ‘Hello! Simon’s got an observatory here,’ he remarked. ‘I didn’t notice that on my previous visit.’
‘So he has.’ Rex followed De Richleau’s glance to a dome that crowned the house, but at that moment an electric globe suddenly flared into life about their heads, and the door in the wall swung open disclosing a sallow-faced manservant in dark livery.
‘Mr Simon Aron?’ inquired De Richleau, but the man was already motioning them to enter, so they followed him up a short covered path and the door in the wall clanged behind them.
The vestibule of the house was dimly lit, but Rex, who never wore a coat or hat in the evening, noticed that two sets of outdoor apparel lay, neatly folded, on a long console table as the silent footman relieved De Richleau of his wraps. Evidently, Simon had other visitors.
‘Maybe Mr Aron’s in conference and won’t want to be disturbed,’ he said to the sallow-faced servant with a sudden feeling of guilt at their intrusion. Perhaps, after all, their fears for Simon were quite groundless and his neglect only due to a prolonged period of intense activity on the markets, but the man only bowed and led them across the hall.
‘The fellow’s a mute,’ whispered the Duke. ‘Deaf and dumb I’m certain.’ As he spoke the servant flung open a couple of large double doors and stood waiting for them to enter.
A long, narrow room, opening into a wide salon, stretched before them. Both were decorated in the lavish magnificence of the Louis Seize period, but for the moment the dazzling brilliance of the lighting prevented them taking in the details of the parquet floors, the crystal mirrors, the gilded furniture and beautifully wrought tapestries.
Rex was the first to recover and with a quick intake of breath he clutched De Richleau’s arm. ‘By Jove she’s here!’ he muttered almost inaudibly, his eyes riveted on a tall, graceful girl who stood some yards away at the entrance of the salon talking to Simon.
Three times in the last eighteen months he had chanced upon that strange, wise, beautiful face, with the deep eyes beneath heavy lids that seemed so full of secrets, and gave the lovely face a curiously ageless look.
He had seen her first in a restaurant in Budapest; months later again, in a traffic jam when his car was wedged beside hers in New York; and then, strangely enough, riding along a road with three men, in the countryside around Buenos Aires. How extraordinary that he should find her here, and what luck.
De Richleau’s glance was riveted upon their friend. With an abrupt movement, Simon turned towards them. For a second he seemed completely at a loss, his full, sensual mouth hung open to twice its normal extent and his receding jaw almost disappeared behind his white tie. His dark eyes were filled with amazement and something suspiciously like fear, but he recovered almost instantly and his old smile flashed out as he came forward to greet them.
‘My dear Simon,’ the Duke’s voice was a silken purr, ‘how can we apologise for breaking in on you like this?’
‘Sure, we hadn’t a notion you were throwing a party,’ boomed Rex, his glance following the girl who had moved off to join another woman and three men who were talking together in the inner room.
‘But I’m delighted,’ murmured Simon genially. ‘Delighted to see you both. Only got a few friends. Meeting of a little society I belong to, that’s all.’
‘Then we couldn’t dream of interrupting you, could we Rex?’ De Richleau demurred with well-assumed innocence.
‘Why, certainly not, we wouldn’t even have come in if that servant of yours hadn’t taken us for some other folks you’re expecting.’ But despite their apparent unwillingness to intrude, neither of the two made any gesture of withdrawal and, mentally, De Richleau gave Simon full marks for the way in which he accepted their obviously unwelcome presence.
‘I’m most terribly sorry about dinner tonight,’ he was proclaiming earnestly. ‘Meant to rest for my bridge, I simply have to these days, to be any good. Even forgot till six o’clock that I had these people coming.’
‘How fortunate for you, Simon, that your larder is so well stocked.’ The Duke could not resist the gentle dig as his glance fell on a long buffet spread with a collation which would have rivalled the cold table in any great hotel.
‘I ‘phoned Ferraro,’ parried Simon glibly. ‘The Berkeley never lets me down. Would have asked you to drop in, but… er, with this meeting on I felt you’d be bored.’
‘Bored! Not a bit, but we are keeping you from your other guests.’ With an airy gesture De Richleau waved his hand in the direction of the inner room.
‘Sure,’ agreed Rex heartily, as he laid a large hand on Simon’s arm and gently propelled him towards the salon. ‘Don’t you worry about us, we’ll just take a glass of wine off you and fade away.’ His eyes were fixed again on the pale oval face of the girl.
Simon’s glance flickered swiftly towards the Duke who ignored, with a guileless smile, his obvious reluctance for them to meet his other friends, and noted with amusement that he avoided any proper introduction.
‘Er–er–two very old friends of mine,’ he said, with his little nervous cough as he interchanged a swift look with a fleshy, moon-faced man whom De Richleau knew to be Mocata.
‘Well, well, how nice,’ the bald man lisped with unsmiling eyes. ‘It is a pleasure always to welcome any friends of Simon’s.’
De Richleau gave him a frigid bow and thought of reminding him coldly that Simon’s welcome was sufficient in his own house, but for the moment it was policy to hide his antagonism so he replied politely that Mocata was most kind, then, with the ease which characterised all his movements, he turned his attention to an elderly lady who was seated near by.
She was a woman of advanced age but fine presence, richly dressed and almost weighed down with heavy jewellery. Between her fingers she held the stub of a fat cigar at which she was puffing vigorously.
‘Madame.’ The Duke drew a case containing the long Hoyos from his pocket and bent towards her. ‘Your cigar is almost finished, permit me to offer you one of mine.’
She regarded him for a moment with her bright eyes, then stretched out a fat, beringed hand. ‘Sank you, Monsieur, I see you are a connoisseur.’ With her beaked, parrot nose she sniffed at the cigar appreciatively. ‘But I ‘ave not seen you at our other meetings, what ees your name?’
‘De Richleau, Madame, and yours?’
‘De Richleau! a maestro indeed.’ She nodded heavily. ‘Je suis Madame D’Urfé, you will ‘ave heard of me.’
‘But certainly.’ The Duke bowed again. ‘Do you think we shall have a good meeting tonight?’
‘If the sky clears we should learn much,’ answered the old lady cryptically.
‘Ho! Ho!’ thought the Duke. ‘We are about to make use of Simon’s observatory it seems. Good, let us learn more.’ But before he could pump the elderly Frenchwoman further, Simon deftly interrupted the conversation and drew him away.
‘So you have taken up the study of the stars, my friend,’ remarked the Duke as his host led him to the buffet.
‘Oh, er, yes. Find astronomy very interesting, you know. Have some caviare?’ Simon’s eyes flickered anxiously towards Rex, who was deep in conversation with the girl.
As he admired her burnished hair and slumbrous eyes, for a moment the Duke was reminded of a Boticelli painting. She had, he thought, that angel look, the golden virgin to the outward eye whose veins were filled with unlit fire. A rare cinquecento type who should have lived in the Italy of the Borgias. Then he turned again to Simon. ‘It was because of the observatory then that you acquired this house, I suppose?’
‘Yes. You must come up one night and we’ll watch a few stars together.’ Something of the old warmth had crept into Simon’s tone and he was obviously in earnest as he offered the invitation, but the Duke was not deceived into believing that he was welcome on the present occasion.
‘Thank you, I should enjoy that,’ he said promptly, while over Simon’s shoulder he studied the other two men who made up the party. One, a tall, fair fellow, stood talking to Mocata. His thin, flaxen hair brushed flatly back, and whose mysterious, light eyes proclaimed him an Albino; the other, a stout man dressed in a green plaid and ginger kilt, was walking softly up and down with his hands clasped behind his back, muttering to himself inaudibly. His wild, flowing white hair and curious costume suggested an Irish bard.
‘Altogether a most unprepossessing lot,’ thought the Duke, and his opinion was not improved by three new arrivals. A grave-faced Chinaman wearing the robes of a Mandarin, whose eyes betrayed a cold, merciless nature: a Eurasian with only one arm, the left, and a tall, thin woman with a scraggy throat and beetling eyebrows which met across the bridge of her nose.
Mocata received them as though he were the host, but as the tall woman bore down on Simon he promptly left the Duke, who guessed that the move was to get out of earshot. However, the lady’s greeting in a high-pitched, Middle Western accent came clearly to him.
‘Well, Simon, all excitement about what we’ll learn tonight? It should help a heap, this being your natal conjunction.’
‘Ha! Ha!’ said De Richleau to himself. ‘Now I begin to understand a little and I like this party even less.’ Then, with the idea of trying to verify his surmise, he turned towards the one-armed Eurasian, but Simon, apparently guessing his intention, quickly excused himself to the American woman, and cut off the Duke’s advance.
‘So, my young friend,’ thought De Richleau, ‘you mean to prevent me from obtaining any further information about this strange gathering, do you? All right! I’ll twist your tail a little,’ and he remarked sweetly:
‘Did you say that you were interested in Astronomy or Astrology, Simon? There is a distinct difference you know.’
‘Oh, Astronomy, of course,’ Simon ran a finger down his long nose. ‘It is nice to see you again, have some more champagne?’
‘Thank you, no, later perhaps.’ The Duke smothered a smile as he caught Mocata, who had overheard him, exchange a quick look with Simon.
‘Wish this were an ordinary meeting,’ Simon said, a moment later, with an uneasy frown. ‘Then I’d ask you to stay, but we’re going through the Society’s annual balance-sheet tonight, and you and Rex not being members, you know …’
‘Quite, quite, my dear fellow, of course,’ De Richleau agreed amicably, while to himself he thought. ‘That’s a nasty fence young sly-boots has put up for me, but I’ll be damned if I go before I find out for certain what I came for’. Then he added in a cheerful whisper: ‘I should have gone before but Rex seems so interested in the young woman in green, I want to give him as long as possible.’
‘My dear chap,’ Simon protested, ‘I feel horribly embarrassed at having to ask you to go at all.’
A fat, oily-looking Babu in a salmon-pink turban and gown had just arrived and was shaking hands with Mocata; behind him came a red-faced Teuton, who suffered the deformity of a hare lip.
Simon stepped quickly forward again as the two advanced, but De Richleau once more caught the first words which were snuffled out by the hare-lipped man.
‘Well, Abraham, wie geht es?’ Then there came the fulsome chuckle of the fleshy Indian. ‘You must not call him that, it is unlucky to do so before the great night.’
‘The devil it is!’ muttered the Duke to himself, but Simon had left the other two with almost indecent haste in order to rejoin him, so he said with a smile: ‘I gather you are about to execute Deed Poll, my friend?’
‘Eh!’ Simon exclaimed with a slight start.
‘To change your name,’ De Richleau supplemented.
‘Ner.’ He shook his head rapidly as he uttered the curious negative that he often used. It came of his saying ‘No’ without troubling to close the lips of his full mouth. ‘Ner, that’s only a sort of joke we have between us, a sort of initiation ceremony, I’m not a full member yet.’
‘I see, then you have ceremonies in your Astronomical Society, how interesting!’
As he spoke De Richleau, out of the corner of his eye, saw Mocata make a quick sign to Simon and then glance at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece; so to save his host the awkwardness of having actually to request his departure, he exclaimed: ‘Dear me! Twenty past eleven, I had no idea it was so late. I must drag Rex away from that lovely lady after all, I fear.’
‘Well, if you must go.’ Simon looked embarrassed and worried, but catching Mocata’s eye again, he promptly led the way over to his other unwelcome guest.
Rex gave a happy grin as they came up. ‘This is marvellous Simon. I’ve been getting glimpses of this lady in different continents these two years past, and she seems to recall having seen me too. It’s just great that we should become acquainted at last through you.’ Then he smiled quickly at the girl: ‘May I present my friend De Richleau? Duke, this is Miss Tanith.’
De Richleau bent over her long, almost transparent hand and raised it to his lips. ‘How unfortunate I am,’ he said with old-fashioned gallantry, ‘to be presented to you only in time to say good-bye, and perhaps gain your displeasure by taking your new friend with me as well.’
‘But,’ she regarded him steadily out of large, clear, amber eyes. ‘Surely you do not depart before the ceremony?’
‘I fear we must. We are not members of your, er, Circle you see, only old friends of Simon’s.’
A strange look of annoyance and uncertainty crept into her glance, and the Duke guessed that she was searching her mind for any indiscretions she might have committed in her conversation with Rex. Then she shrugged lightly and, with a brief inclination of the head which dismissed them both, turned coldly away.
The Duke took Simon’s arm affectionately, as the three friends left the salon. ‘I wonder,’ he said persuasively, ‘if you could spare me just two minutes before we go—no more I promise you.’
‘Rather, of course.’ Simon seemed now to have regained his old joviality. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for missing your dinner tonight—this wretched meeting—and I’ve seen nothing of you for weeks. Now Rex is over we must throw a party together.’
‘We will, we will,’ De Richleau agreed heartily, ‘but listen; is not Mars in conjunction with Venus tonight?’
‘Ner,’ Simon replied promptly. ‘With Saturn, that’s what they’ve all come to see.’
‘Ah, Saturn! My Astronomy is so rusty, but I saw some mention of it in the paper yesterday, and at one time I was a keen student of the Stars. Would it be asking too much, my dear fellow, to have just one peep at it through your telescope? We should hardly delay your meeting for five minutes.’
Simon’s hesitation was barely perceptible before he nodded his bird-like head with vigorous assent. ‘Um, that’s all right, they haven’t all arrived yet, let’s go up.’ Then, with his hands thrust deep in the trouser pockets of his exceedingly well-cut suit, he led them hurriedly through the hall and up three flights of stairs.’
De Richleau followed more slowly. Stairs were the one thing which ruffled his otherwise equable temper and he had no desire to lose it now. By the time he arrived in the lofty chamber, with Rex behind him, Simon had all the lights switched on.
‘Well you’ve certainly gone in for it properly,’ Rex remarked as he surveyed the powerful telescope slanting to the roof and a whole arsenal of sextants, spheres and other astrological impedimenta ranged about the room.
‘It’s rather an exact science you see,’ Simon volunteered.
‘Quite,’ agreed the Duke briefly. ‘But I wonder, a little, that you should consider charts of the Macrocosm necessary to your studies.
‘Oh, those!’ Simon shrugged his narrow shoulders as he glanced around the walls. ‘They’re only for fun—relics of the Alchemistic nonsense in the Middle Ages, but quite suitable for decoration.’
‘How clever of you to carry out your scheme of decoration on the floor as well.’ The Duke was thoughtfully regarding a five-pointed star enclosed within two circles between which numerous mystic characters in Greek and Hebrew had been carefully drawn.
‘Yes, good idea, wasn’t it?’ Simon tittered into his hand. It was the familiar gesture which both his friends knew so well, yet somehow his chuckle had not quite its usual ring.
The silence that followed was a little awkward, and in it, all three plainly heard a muffled scratching noise that seemed to come from a large wicker basket placed against the wall.
‘You’ve got mice here, Simon,’ said Rex casually, but De Richleau had stiffened where he stood. Then, before Simon could bar his way, he leapt towards the hamper and ripped open the lid.
‘Stop that!’ cried Simon angrily, and dashing forward he forced it shut again, but too late, for within the basket the Duke had seen two living pinioned fowls—a black rooster and a white hen.
With a sudden access of bitter fury he turned on Simon, and seizing him by his silk lapels, shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. ‘You fool,’ he thundered. ‘I’d rather see you dead than monkeying with Black Magic.’