That evening Fate took a hand, for it was decreed that a few minutes before eight o’clock Barney Sullivan and Mary Morden should meet on the doorstep of 204 Barkston Gardens.
They had approached from different directions and, until they came face to face, she noticed him only as a youngish man wearing a soft hat and a loose-fitting grey tweed overcoat that hung from broad shoulders, while he registered her as a tallish girl with her head well up and a fine springy walk. Then, as they turned together into the square brick porch, the electric light in its roof suddenly revealed clearly to each the face of the other.
Barney had no more than a vague feeling that he had seen Mary somewhere before; after which his mind switched almost instantly to speculate on why such a good-looking young woman should be dabbling in spiritualism instead of spending her evening at some cheerful party, or dining and dancing with a boy-friend.
That he did not know her again was perfectly understandable; for, apart from the fact that it was five years since they had met, Mary had changed her appearance in every way that was possible. Her smooth plaits had gone; she now wore her hair shoulder length and curled at the ends, and had had it dyed a rich, dark brown. Her thickish eyebrows had also been dyed, and plucked so that they remained fairly thick at the inner ends but tapered away to points which gave the impression that they turned up slightly at the ends. She was wearing more make-up: a much heavier shade of powder, that gave her fair skin the bronze tint of a brunette who has recently been sun-bathing, mascara on her lashes, eye-shadow, and a magenta lip-stick with which she had succeeded in changing a little the shape of her mouth. Her experience of making up while in cabaret had stood her in good stead, and even her ex-neighbours at Wimbledon would have been unlikely to recognise the quietly turned out Mrs. Morden in this new presentation by which she had deprived herself of her golden hair, but become much more of a femme fatale.
On the other hand, at the first glance, Mary recognised Barney and her heart gave a jump that seemed to bring it right up into her mouth. Her face would have betrayed her had he not at that moment turned to ring the front-door bell. It was answered almost immediately by an elderly woman servant. Barney politely stepped aside for Mary to enter, then followed her in.
As the servant took his coat and hat, Mary walked on towards a middle-aged woman who was standing in the middle of the square hall. She was a large lady with a big bust on which dangled several necklaces of semi-precious stones. From her broad, flat face several chins sloped down into a thick neck, the whole being heavily powdered. Her eyes were a very light blue and unusually widely spaced. Upon her head was piled an elaborate structure of brassy curls, and her whole appearance suggested to Barney the type of rich Edwardian widow whose Mecca used to be the Palm Courts of Grand Hotels. He assumed, rightly, that she was Mrs. Wardeel.
To Mary she extended, held high, a carefully manicured and heavily beringed hand, as she said in a deep voice: ‘Ah, Mrs. Mauriac; or perhaps, now that you have become a regular attendant at our little gatherings, you will allow me to call you Margot?’
‘So, she is French,’ Barney was thinking. But actually Mary had been mainly governed in the choice of a nom de guerre by making it fit with the initials on her handbags, and other personal belongings, that it would have been a nuisance to have to alter. It was only as an afterthought that it occurred to her that, as she had to make another name for a while, it would be rather fun to assume the sort of one that might have been chosen for a foreign film-star. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wardeel continued to gush at her.
‘You know, I always take a special interest in the young who seek the great truths – young physically, I mean; for, of course, we are all young whenever we get away from these wretched bodies that anchor us here. Not, of course, my dear that that applies to you. But there is no escape from the advancing years, is there? And for the young to learn early that they will never really grow old is such a marvellous protection against the time when one’s looks begin to fade. I am sure that one of the Masters must have you in his particular care to have guided you to us so early in your present incarnation.’
As Mary smiled and murmured a few appropriate words, Barney came up behind her. Mrs. Wardeel turned to him, again offered the beringed hand, and made a gracious inclination of her big synthetically-gold-crowned head.
‘Ah; and now a new seeker after the Light. But we have two tonight. Are you Mr. Betterton or Lord Larne?’
Barney pressed the slightly flabby fingers and replied with a gravity that he felt the occasion called for. ‘I’m Lord Larne, and I am most grateful to you for allowing me to – er – come here and learn about the sort of things that really matter.’
‘You are welcome,’ she said in her deep voice. ‘I welcome you in the name of the Masters. All who come here are sent by them; but only upon trial. Do not expect too much at once. Those who show scepticism and demand proof for everything reveal by that that they are not yet sufficiently advanced to be worthy of approaching the higher spheres. But, if you are patient and receptive, stage by stage the great truths will be unveiled to you.’
Three more people had arrived so, turning to Mary, she added, ‘Mrs. Mauriac, would you take our new friend, Lord Larne, through to the meeting room?’
Mary’s heart was still pounding, but her face now showed nothing of her inward agitation. On Mrs. Wardeel’s introducing her to Barney, they exchanged a conventional smile, then walked side by side towards a room at the back of the house. As they did so, she was wondering what could possibly have brought to such a gathering the type of man she knew him to be, and, even more extraordinary, why he should be using a title to which she believed he had no right.
The room they entered was long and fairly broad and looked larger than it was in fact because all its furniture – except a desk at one end – had been removed and replaced be seven rows of fold-up wooden chairs. Some twenty people had already taken their seats. Most of them were middle-aged and fairly prosperous looking; there were more women than men, and among the former were two Indian ladies wearing caste marks and saris.
Barney ran his eye swiftly over such of their faces as he could see from where he stood and decided that they looked a more normal crowd than he had expected – in fact, they might all have been collected in one swoop by clearing and transporting the occupants of the lounge of any of the better-class South Kensington hotels. Mary nodded a greeting to a few of them, then took the chair that he was holding for her. As he sat down beside her he said:
‘I gather that you are one of the older inhabitants of this village, Mrs. Mauriac?’
‘Oh, I…’ her mouth felt dry and her voice threatened to rise from nervous tension. With an effort she got it under control. ‘I’m far from that. This is only the third meeting that I’ve attended.’
Barney noted that she had no French accent, then he replied:
‘Even that puts you quite a bit ahead of me. Do you find the teaching easy to follow?’
‘Some of it.’ To cover her confusion Mary hurried on. ‘I find the arguments for believing in Reincarnation simple and convincing, and I’ve become terribly interested in that. But I’m still a long way from understanding the Theosophical doctrine.’
‘Really!’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I was under the impression that Theosophists were anti-doctrinaire. I thought they concerned themselves only with getting at the original wisdom that is said to lie at the root of all the great religions, but most of which has since been obscured by the teachings introduced by many generations of ignorant priests.’
‘That’s quite true; Theosophy does not conflict with Christianity or Buddhism in their best sense. But all the same it has its own doctrine, and much of it seems awfully complicated to me. You see, it isn’t as though this was a course of lectures in which one starts at the beginning; each is on a different aspect of the ancient teaching, and newcomers like you and I have to do our best to pick up what we can as we go along.’
Having by this time had a chance to take full stock of Mary, Barney was congratulating himself on his luck in acquiring so unexpectedly such a glamorous companion with whom to listen to what he anticipated would be a lot of twaddle; but he was temporarily prevented from developing the acquaintance further by the arrival of an elderly lady, leaning on an ebony walking stick, who greeted Mary with a smile, took the chair on her other side, and began to talk to her about the last meeting.
During the next five minutes another dozen or so people arrived, including a fat, squat Indian wearing thick-lensed glasses, and with protruding teeth, who from his bowing and smiling to right and left seemed to know nearly everyone there. Then Mrs. Wardeel came in followed by a small, bald man in a dark grey suit who looked as if he might have been a bank manager. He walked round to a chair behind the desk while she paused beside it. Silence fell and she said:
‘Dear followers of the Path, Mr. Silcox is well known to most of you. We are blessed in having him with us again. Old friends and new alike will, I know, benefit from another of his talks. This evening he is going to speak to us on the True Light to be found in the Gospels.’
Mrs. Wardeel took a seat that had been kept for her in the front row and Mr. Silcox stood up. Without any unctuous preamble he went straight into his subject, which was to place a new interpretation on many of the sayings of Jesus Christ, given the assumption that He believed in Reincarnation, was Himself in His last incarnation, and was really referring to such matters most of the time.
According to Mr. Silcox, when our Lord spoke of His ‘Father’, He was referring not to a father either physical or divine, but to His own complete personality built up during countless incarnations, only a fragment of which He had brought down with Him to earth.
This argument was based on the Reincarnationist belief that everyone’s parents are chosen for them only to ensure that they are given the sort of start in life best suited to provide them with an opportunity to learn whatever lessons are decreed for them in their new incarnation; and that they are their own father in the sense that their egos have already been formed by certain of their experiences during a long succession of past lives.
In support of this contention the speaker drew attention to that passage in the Second Commandment to the effect that God would ‘visit the sins of the fathers upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation’.
‘Could any sane person,’ Mr. Silcox asked, ‘believe a just god capable of showing such vicious malice as to threaten the innocent and unborn with dire chastisement for evil done by their physical parents or grandparents?’ Clearly the explanation of this apparently harsh decree was that, each of us being spiritually the child of the personality we had created for ourselves in previous lives, if we did evil in our present incarnation we should have to pay for it in the future, and it might take us three or four more incarnations before we had fully worked off our debt.
All this was new to Barney and, far from being bored as he had expected, he found it deeply interesting; so for the next half-hour he gave his mind almost entirely to following Mr. Silcox’s interpretation of the sayings of Our Lord.
Mary, on the other hand, was hardly listening. The main arguments for Reincarnation were already known to her, and her thoughts had gone back five years to the last time she had seen Barney. That had been in the grey dawn of early morning in a room of a small hotel in Dublin. He had not long got out of the bed they had shared and, having dressed, he had kissed her goodbye with the cheerful words:
‘I’ll see you again soon, sweetheart, and we’ll have better fun next time.’ But there had been no next time and, although she had searched high and low for him, she had never seen him again until tonight. With a sick feeling she went back in her mind over the whole sordid story of her life as Mary McCreedy.
Her mother had earned a precarious living as a small-part actress in musical comedy, vaudeville and anything else that offered. About her father she knew nothing except that, according to her mother, he was a naval officer and had been lost at sea while she was still an infant. As no reference was ever made to any of Ms family she suspected that he had never married her mother. In any case, whether or not she was illegitimate, she knew that to have been the case with her brother, Shaun, who had been born three years after herself. His father had been a Dublin business man, known to her during her childhood as Uncle Patrick. She assumed now that in those days he largely supported the household, as they had lived in reasonable comfort and she and her brother had been educated privately. But when she was fifteen ‘Uncle’ Patrick had died, and they had had to move to a much poorer part of the city.
Shortly afterwards her mother had taken her away from the Convent she was attending, to have her taught dancing. The following year she appeared in Pantomime and, as she was a well-developed girl for her age she had, by lying about it, got herself a job when barely seventeen in the Cabaret of a Dublin night-club.
Meanwhile her mother, having failed to find another permanent protector, and harassed by debt, had taken to the bottle; then, before Mary had been many months in Cabaret, on the way home one Saturday night in a state of liquor her mother had been knocked down and killed by a bus. After that Mary had had to move with her young brother into two rooms, and had become the sole support of their little household.
The night-club where she worked would not have been worthy of the name by continental standards, so hedged about was it with restrictions imposed by a Municipality under the moral influence of the Roman Catholic Church. There were no near-nude floor shows, nor was drinking permitted till the small hours of the morning. In fact, it was little more than a restaurant that hired a troupe of girls to sing and dance in little numbers which would not give offence to family parties and, in theory at least, the girls were all respectable. But, of course, between shows they were expected to act as dance-hostesses to any man who might ask them and so, inevitably, they were inured to receiving certain propositions.
Mary had been aware that some of her companions owed their smarter clothes and expensive trifles to accepting such offers, and she had not got on less well with any of them on that account; but at eighteen the teaching of the nuns still had a strong influence upon her. Moreover, she cherished romantic ideas that in due course a Prince Charming would come along, and that she would be shamed if, on his marrying her, she were not still a virgin. Yet, with a young brother to keep as well as herself, although the Church school to which he went had waived his fees since their mother’s death, she found it ever harder to make ends meet.
That had been the situation when she met Barney Sullivan. He had come in one evening with several other young roisterers and picked her out to dance with. She had been attracted at once by his merry smile and carefree gaiety, but at the end of the evening he had casually given her a handsome tip and made no suggestion of seeing her again. However, in the weeks that followed he had come in on several occasions after dinner with three or four other well-off young fellows out for a good time, danced with her, and given her the impression that he had fallen for her. Then one night he had turned up with the same little crowd of friends, this time slightly tight, but most cheerfully so; and, after sharing a bottle of champagne with her, he had suggested that she should sleep with him. On her making her usual reply that she was ‘not that sort of a girl’ he had refused to believe her, declaring with a laugh that all the girls there did if a chap could make it worth their while; but he had not pressed her further.
A few nights later he had come there again, and that night it so happened that she was in desperate trouble. Her young brother, who was in his last term at school, was the treasurer of the football club, and he had confessed to her that afternoon that he had spent the money entrusted to him. If he could not replace it by the following day he would be found out and branded as a thief. It was only a matter of six pounds odd, but she had not got it and had already had from the management an advance on her wage to pay the rent. She had intended to humiliate herself by attempting to borrow from some of the other girls, but that would have meant a further debt round her neck that it would be a struggle to repay. Barney, flushed with champagne and with a pocket full of money from a lucky day at the races, had offered her twenty pounds if she would do as several of the other girls had, and go to bed with him. Attracted to him as she was, and harassed by her anxiety about her brother, she had given way to his pleading.
No sooner had they left the club than she began to regret her decision and, for her, the next hour was one of misery. Although she was a normal healthy girl fully capable of passion, she was totally inexperienced; so a combination of panic, guilt and – much as she needed the money – shame at having succumbed to earning it in this way, temporarily rendered her frigid. Barney, feeling on top of the world, and his finer senses, dulled by the wine he had drunk, swiftly set himself to overcome her unresponsiveness. It was only afterwards, as she lay weeping in his arms, that he realised to his considerable distress that she had been a virgin.
But for her matters had not ended there. At first she had put down his non-reappearance at the club to disappointment in her; then, to her horror, she realised that she was going to have a baby. Instantly she jumped to the conclusion that he was purposely avoiding her because he suspected that he might have given her one. She did not know his address and, although she asked all sorts of people, none of them knew it either. It was not until some weeks later that a friend of his came to the club and was able to tell her that he had gone off to America quite suddenly, without even saying goodbye to his circle of boon companions.
Meanwhile her life had become one long agony of anxiety and fear. In vain she lit candles and prayed morning, noon and night to Our Lady for a natural release from her condition; her prayers remained unanswered. At length she confided in one of the other, older, girls and learned that she could be got out of her trouble; but it was going to cost a lot of money. As she was as hard-up as ever, and the matter was urgent, there was only one thing for it; her friend arranged for her to borrow the bulk of the money from a money-lender, and she had to begin accepting the offers of men who came to the club, whether she liked them or not, as the only means of repaying the instalments on the loan.
She soon learned that such encounters were not always unpleasant, but in most instances she found them loathsome and degrading. Moreover, as the club was very far from being thought of as a centre of prostitution, advances of that kind were made to the girls there only occasionally, and it soon became apparent to her that Barney had treated her with exceptional generosity; which meant that a considerable time must elapse before she was entirely free from her debt.
Those months remained vivid in her memory: the horror and pain of the illegal operation; her misery at having to give up practising her religion because she could not bring herself to confess to having committed so grievous a sin; the nausea that had at times assailed her from having to submit to the caresses of half-drunken men; the awful strain of having to pretend to enjoy it when, tired from a long evening’s dancing and aching for her bed, she had been driven miles out into the country by some stranger to be made love to in the back of his car; and the shame aroused in her by the sneering looks or lecherous grins of slatternly chambermaids who had shown her up with men to tawdry bedrooms in dubious little hotels.
And her penance had lasted longer than it need have done, since, to bring some cheer into her life, she had given way to the understandable weakness of using part of the money she earned to buy better clothes and many small luxuries which she could not before afford. With the interest on her debt, it had been ten months before she had managed to get clear finally. Then, shortly afterwards, during a fortnight’s holiday at the seaside, she had met Teddy Morden; and he had taken her to London, freeing her from her past, and giving her his love, his name and a happy married life.
Yet even four years as a contented wife had not made her feelings about Barney Sullivan less bitter. It was his act which had resulted in those ten months during which she had hardly known a day free from anxiety, or disgust with herself at the life she had been forced into leading! It never entered her mind that if a man paid a girl to go to bed with him he was entitled to assume that she knew how to look after herself, and was not responsible for what might become of her afterwards. As she saw it, he should have known that he might have put her in the family way and come to the club again to find out if she was all right; instead of which, as it appeared to her, he had deliberately refrained from doing so from fear that she might be pregnant by him, then gone off to America leaving her to her unhappy fate. In consequence, in her mind he had become the symbol of all that is mean and contemptible in a man.
With a little start she suddenly realised that Mr. Silcox had come to the end of his talk. During the ten minutes that followed several members of the audience asked him questions, which he answered with easy assurance. Then Mrs. Wardeel moved a vote of thanks to him which met with decorous applause, after which she said:
‘Now, dear fellow followers of the Way, let us rearrange the chairs and see what Mrs. Brimmings has in store for us. No doubt some of you will have heard of Mrs. Brimmings. From the accounts I have had she is a remarkably gifted medium and under her control, the Chinese Mandarin Chi-Ling – whose last incarnation took place some two hundred years ago – she is able to make contact with not only the first, but also the second and third, astral planes. We are most fortunate in having her with us tonight.’
Everyone stood up. The unoccupied chairs were put back against the wall and the rest formed into a large circle, in the middle of which a chair was placed for Mrs. Brimmings. As Mrs. Wardeel led her forward to it, Barney saw that she was a small, faded elderly woman with grey hair scragged back into a bun, and wearing rather shoddy clothes. It occurred to him that she might easily be taken for a charwoman, and a moment later she said to Mrs. Wardeel in accents that reinforced that impression:
‘May I ‘ave a rug, dear. Me poor feet get so cold when I’m out of me body.’
A rug was duly fetched and wrapped round her, then the company settled down and, crossing their arms, all linked hands with their neighbours. Before taking her place in the circle Mrs. Wardeel switched out all the lights except one with a heavy blue shade, this darkening the room to a faint bluish gloom, in which the medium could be seen only as a dark shape; then she said in a deep whisper:
‘For the two new friends who are with us tonight, I shall give the usual warning. Whatever may happen, no one must break the circle by letting go the hand of his neighbour. To do so would be to place the medium in grave danger by bringing her spirit back to her body too suddenly. And no one should address her unless called on to do so.’
After that, silence fell, broken only by an occasional half-suppressed cough or the faint creak of one of the wooden chairs as someone eased his position. To Barney the silence seemed to continue for a long time, which he judged to be about twenty minutes, although in fact it was little more than ten. But it had the effect of creating a definite atmosphere of tension and expectancy.
At length a faint blob of light appeared high up in a corner of the room. It flickered about uncertainly for a little then, to Barney’s surprise, descended on his own forehead. With difficulty he suppressed an exclamation; but, almost instantly, it moved again and came to rest for a moment on the forehead of a man nearly opposite to him, after which it disappeared.
‘Ah!’ Mrs. Wardeel gave a heavy sigh of satisfaction, then declared in an audible whisper. ‘All is favourable. Our two new friends are accepted on probation to sit with us in the mystic circle.’
Again silence fell. It lasted for about five minutes and Barney was becoming a little bored when, without the least warning, an illuminated trumpet appeared a few feet above the medium’s head and from it there came a long musical note.
In a flash it was gone, but the faintly seen form of the medium seemed to be writhing from side to side and she was breathing heavily. After a moment she became quite still and from her came a voice utterly unlike her normal one, which said with a slight foreign accent, but clearly and with authority:
‘Once more you disturb my meditations. Beware that you do not do so without good cause. Yet I will always descend among those swathed in the bonds of a present incarnation to bring them that need me comfort and reassurance.’
There was a pause, then the voice went on. ‘You who are now called Josephine Carden. Why do you still seek to get into touch with him who was your husband? You have already been told by a companion of mine, known as Little Violet, that all is well with him, and that he wishes to forget his last time here, so that he may the sooner make progress towards a higher state.’
A low sob came from a fat woman not far away from Barney on his left, and her body threatened to slump forward, but was held back by her neighbours keeping a firm grip on her hands.
‘Hush, dear,’ murmured Mrs. Wardeel. ‘That was most unkind of the Mandarin; but another time some other guide may bring you comfort.’
‘Silence woman!’ shouted the Mandarin. ‘My time is not to be wasted or my judgment questioned by such as you. Silcox! Henry Silcox, I have good tidings for you. The Master K.H. has consented to your passing the Second Grade of Initiation.’
The little man who had given the talk gave a gasp and murmured, ‘I am humbly grateful. I shall do my utmost to be worthy.’
There came a short pause, then the voice spoke again. ‘Betterton. There is one here named Betterton?’
‘Yes, yes!’ exclaimed the other newcomer, opposite Barney, on whose forehead the light had also rested.
‘You seek knowledge of the wife who recently cast off her fleshly envelope. She is happy. She is united again with the girl child who was sufficiently filled with grace to leave you while in her last life still young in years. Your wife bids you marry again for the sake of the other children.’
So it went on for about twenty minutes, the strong, vibrant, slightly foreign voice throwing out bits of information or commands to some dozen people in the audience. Then silence fell again. Some minutes passed and the medium began to groan. Mrs. Wardeel broke the circle, went over to her and softly stroked her forehead until she came round, then asked:
‘Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Brimmings? Can we put the lights up now?’
‘Yes, dear.’ Mrs, Brimmings spoke again with the voice of a cockney char. ‘Mister Chi-Ling always takes a lot out of me; but I’ll be meself again soon as I’ve ‘ad a cup-o’-tea an’a bite to eat.’
As Mr. Silcox switched on the lights, Barney made a quick assessment of the performance he had seen; and he was fully convinced that it was a performance. It had been well put on and superficially convincing; but he had little doubt that the light and the trumpet were permanent properties of the room frequently put to use at these meetings. So, too, could a sound apparatus be installed beneath Mrs. Brimmings’s chair through which someone outside the room had made Chi-Ling’s pronouncements; or else the medium was quite a different personality from that which she normally appeared, and was a clever actress, highly skilled in voice production. As for the Mandarin’s messages, suitable ones could easily be cooked up to sound impressive to the older members of the circle with whose circumstances Mrs. Wardeel should have had little difficulty in becoming acquainted. That, too, doubtless applied to the newcomer, Betterton, whereas to himself, about whom Mrs. Wardeel had had no means of finding anything out, no message had been given.
Counting heads, he reckoned that Mrs, Wardeel must have netted about thirty guineas on the evening. Silcox, he thought, was probably honest and had given his talk for nothing, while Mrs. Brimmings’s rake-off for her collaboration was, perhaps, a fiver; so that left a handsome profit and, as the meetings were held weekly, he decided that Mrs.Wardeel was running quite a useful little racket.
As the circle broke up he released Mary’s hand and asked her, ‘Have you ever received a message at one of these sittings?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not yet; although I always concentrate during them, hoping to hear something of a person I knew who has not long been dead.’
‘Passed over, you mean,’ he corrected her with a grin.
She gave him a queer look, his levity giving her cause to wonder more than ever what had brought him to such a gathering. But she turned away without reply, and they mingled with the others who were now filing out of the room.
Crossing the hall, the little crowd entered a smaller room at one side of which there was a buffet with tea, coffee and light refreshments. There a babble of conversation had broken out, and two other men, one the fat Indian with the pebble glasses and hideous protruding teeth, and another whom Mary greeted as Mr. Nutting, came up to her. Anxious not to lose touch with her, Barney swiftly forestalled the others in getting her a cup of coffee and a plate of sandwiches. When he rejoined her she asked him if she had heard aright that he was Lord Larne, and on his smilingly confirming that, she introduced him to Mr. Nutting and the Indian, whose name was Krishna Ratnadatta.
For a short while the four of them talked together about the séance, then Nutting, who proved to be an earnest bore, button-holed Barney and, to his annoyance, entered on a long description of how he had been led to take the Path of Discipleship. But Barney listened to him with only half an ear so, although Ratnadatta was speaking to Mary in a low confidential voice, he happened to overhear him say:
‘These meetings of Mrs. Wardeel’s, they are for the young enquirer very well. Yes, very well for those who, in this incarnation, are at the beginning off the Path. But you, Mrs. Mauriac, I am told by the insight that I haf been given, are already well advanced upon it.’
Barney’s interest at once being aroused, he managed to keep Mr. Nutting going with an occasional appreciative nod, while concentrating on the continuance of the conversation between Mary and the Indian, to whom she replied:
‘I should like to think so, Mr. Ratnadatta.’
‘That it ees so, I know, Mrs. Mauriac,’ were the Indian’s next words. ‘At the two previous meetings after weech we haf talked together I haf by your quick understanding been much impressed. Such understanding ees not given to those who in previous incarnations haf not learnt a lot. Haf you at times perhaps had glimpses off your previous lives?’
‘No,’ said Mary, ‘I’m afraid I can’t claim that I have.’
‘No matter. Some off us bring down with us from our Vase of Memory much more than others. But that ees no criterion off how well filled up with past experience a person’s vase may be. In some case the Great Ones decree that far memory be obscured, for a while, for good purpose. So it ees with you I think. To yourself you owe it to reopen your waking mind to the subconscious, so that you may bring new strengths for progress on the astral plane.’
‘I am endeavouring to recall my dreams and write them down, as the lecturer last week told us that we should.’
‘Good; very good. Such training ees valuable; but to succeed that way require much time.’ Mr. Ratnadatta paused for a moment then went on. ‘There are other roads; channels by weech a person can reach the astral plane with swiftness, but such are great secrets and you will not learn off them here.’
‘Could you perhaps …?’ Mary said hesitantly.
‘It ees possible. But on yourself everything would depend. You would haf to give all your mind to the great work. Perhaps your circumstances do not permit that, eh? Your husband, you haf tell me, passed on two years ago; but perhaps you haf children, or parents to take great part off your thought?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Barney saw Mary shake her head. ‘No, I have no family and am quite alone in the world.’
‘Good, very good. Then, if you haf the will to devote yourself, I will giff thought to introducing you to another circle. Not like this, but one in weech power can be called down; real power by those who haf penetrate far into the mysteries.’.
‘I’d be most terribly grateful if you would.’
‘First we must talk more together, before I can make final decision. For this are you agreeable to meet me on Saturday evening?’
‘Yes; at any time you like.’
‘Good; very good. Meet me plees then at entrance to Sloane Square Tube Station at eight o’clock, and I giff you dinner.’
Flashing his protruding teeth at Mary in an oily smile, Mr. Ratnadatta bowed to her politely and moved away. Murmuring an apology to the verbose Mr. Nutting, Barney swiftly recaptured her and, seeing that the party was beginning to break up, asked:
‘May I see you home, Mrs. Mauriac; or, anyhow, to your Tube or bus stop?’
She hesitated only a second before replying, ‘Yes, if you like. Thank you. I shall be walking; but it’s no great distance as I have a flat in the Cromwell Road.’
Having made their adieux to Mrs. Wardeel, they collected their coats and left the house together. Barney was a fluent and amusing talker, but on this occasion he confined himself to serious comment on the evening’s events, as he feared that if he showed levity about the séance, or showed curiosity about his companion’s private life, she might resent it. But while he talked his mind was functioning independently and again assessing Mrs. Wardeel’s set-up.
He knew well enough that, apart from the typical old lag, it is extremely difficult to pick out, simply by their faces, criminals from law-abiding citizens. But from the general behaviour of the people at the meeting, he had come to the conclusion that the majority were either quite harmless, serious students of the occult, or sensation seekers. Only the Indian had struck him as possibly being a dangerous type, and his view had been reinforced by Ratnadatta’s saying to Mary that he could introduce her to another circle of much higher-powered occultists. It seemed just possible that the Indian had made the same proposal to Morden, and that through accepting it he had got himself involved in Black Magic, then tried too late to break away and been murdered to prevent him betraying the dark secrets of the cult.
Mary, with still vivid memories of her late husband’s nightmares, in which he had mentioned an Indian, had encouraged Ratnadatta’s advances from her first visit to Mrs. Wardeel’s, in the hope that he might be the man Teddy had had on his mind; and now, while listening to Barney’s small-talk about the meeting, she was congratulating herself on being, as she believed, on the right track, and having an appointment to meet Ratnadatta privately on Saturday, which might enable her definitely to link him with the crime.
Barney had already decided that he, too, must cultivate the Indian with the object of also putting himself in the way of securing an invitation to join this more secret circle; but that would take time, and the lovely Mrs. Margot Mauriac, with whom he was walking, was already on the brink of receiving such an invitation. If, therefore, he could keep in touch with her, that might prove a short cut to learning a lot more about Ratnadatta. And in this instance, he felt with pleasurable anticipation that, for once, duty opened a most attractive prospect.
In consequence, when they reached the tall old house half-way along the Cromwell Road, in which Mary had rented a furnished flat on the fourth floor, he said with his most winning manner:
‘You know, I really have found this evening thrilling. It has opened up all sorts of new speculations and ideas in my mind. But I don’t know a soul with whom I can discuss them-that is, except yourself. Would you … I know it’s awful cheek on such a short acquaintance … but would you have dinner with me one night? I’ve got to attend a business meeting tomorrow evening, but what about Thursday or Friday? Please say yes?’
For a moment she looked straight at him; then, with a rather tight-lipped smile, she said, ‘All right then. If you like. Let’s make it Thursday.’
‘Splendid!’ he laughed. ‘I’ll call for you here at seven-thirty.’
A shade awkwardly they shook hands. She turned away, and as she walked up the steps to the porch, he waved her a cheerful ‘Good night’.
Mary had not been taken in by his apparent eagerness to discuss the occult. She knew too well the way a man looks at a woman when she has suddenly aroused a physical interest in him. As she went upstairs to her flat, she was thinking:
‘You rotten little cad. So you’d like to try to seduce me again! Lord Larne indeed! I suppose you’ve found that posing as a Lord makes it easier for you to put girls in the family way then leave them in the lurch. All right, Mr. Barney Sullivan. This time it is I who will lead you up the garden path. I’ll play you until you’re near crazy to have me, then drop you like a brick.’