After the muttering of the old Countess and her veiled allusions to unspeakable depravities, Rex felt that even the air had grown stale and heavy, as though charged with some subtle quality of evil, but on the coming of Tanith the atmosphere seemed to lighten. The morning sunshine was lending a pale golden glow to the street outside and in her hand she held one of the sprays of lilac which he had sent up to her. She lifted it to her face as he returned her smile. ‘So!’ she said in a low clear voice, her eyes mocking him above the fragrant bloom: ‘You insisted then that Madame should let you see me?’
‘I’d have sat around this place all day if she hadn’t,’ Rex confessed frankly, ‘because now we’ve met at last I’m hoping you’ll let me see something of you.’
‘Perhaps, but not today. I have many things to do and already I am late for the dressmaker.’
Rex thanked his stars that the old woman had unwittingly given him a lever in assuming the Duke to be an Adept of great power, and himself his envoy. ‘It’s mighty important that I should see you today,’ he insisted. ‘There are certain things we’ve got to talk about.’
‘Got to!’ A quick frown clouded Tanith’s face. ‘I do not understand!’
‘Ma petite, it is you ’oo do not understan’,’ Madame D’Urfé broke in hastily. The she launched into a torrent of low speech in some foreign language, but Rex caught De Richleau’s name and the word Ipsissimus, so he guessed that she was giving Tanith some version of the events which had taken place the night before, based on his own misleading statements, and wondered miserably how long he would be able to keep up the impersonation which had been thrust upon him.
Tanith nodded several times and studied him with a new interest as she nibbled a small piece of the lilac blossom between her teeth. Then she said with charming frankness: ‘You must forgive me, I had no idea you were such an important member of the Order.’
‘Forget it please,’ he begged, ‘but if you’re free I’d be glad if you could join me for lunch.’
‘That puts me in a difficulty because I am supposed to be lunching with the wife of the Roumanian Minister.’
‘How about this afternoon then?’
Her eyes showed quick surprise. ‘But we shall have to leave here by four o’clock if we are to get down by dusk, and I have my packing to do yet.’
He realised that she was referring to the meeting and covered his blunder swiftly. ‘Of course, I’m always forgetting that these twisting English roads don’t permit of the fast driving I’m used to back home. How would it be if I run you along to your dress place now and then we took a turn round the Park after?’
‘Yes, if you will have lots of patience with me, because I take an almost idiotic interest in my clothes.’
‘You’re telling me!’ he murmured to himself as he admired the slim graceful lines of her figure clad so unostentatiously and yet so suitably for the sunshine of the bright spring day. He picked up his hat and beamed at her. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’
To his amazement he found himself taking leave of the old Countess just as though she were a nice, normal, elderly lady who was chaperoning some young woman to whom he had been formally introduced at a highly respectable dance. And indeed, as they departed, her dark eyes had precisely the same look which had often scared him in mothers who possessed marriageable daughters. Had he not known that such thoughts were anathema to her creed he would have sworn that she was praying that they would be quick about it, so that she could book a day before the end of the season at St George’s, Hanover Square, and was already listing in her mind the guests who should be asked to the reception.
‘Where does the great artist hang out?’ he asked as he helped Tanith into the car.
‘I have two,’ she told him. ‘Schiaparelli just across the square, where I shall be for some twenty minutes, and after I have also to visit Artelle in Knightsbridge—Are you sure that you do not mind waiting for me?’
‘Why, no! We’ve a whole heap of time before us.’
‘And tonight as well,’ she added slowly. ‘I am glad that you will be there because I am just a little nervous.’
‘You needn’t be!’ he said with a sudden tightening of his mouth, but she seemed satisfied with his assurance and had no inkling of his real meaning.
As she alighted in Upper Grosvenor Street he called gaily after her: ‘Twenty minutes mind, and not one fraction over,’ then he drove across the road and pulled up at the International Sportsman’s Club of which he was a member.
The telephone exchange put him through to the British Museum quickly enough, but the operator there nearly drove him frantic. It seemed that it was not part of the Museum staff’s duties to search for visitors in the Reading Room, but after urgent prayers about imaginary dead and dying they at last consented to have the Duke hunted out. The wait that followed seemed interminable but at last De Richleau came to the line.
‘I’ve got the girl,’ Rex told him hurriedly, ‘but how long I’ll be able to keep her I don’t know. I’ve had a long talk, too, with the incredible old woman who smokes cigars—you know the one—Madame D’Urfé. They’re staying at Claridges together and both of them are going to the party you spoke of tonight. Where it’s to be held I don’t know, but they’re leaving London by car at four o’clock and hope to make the place by nightfall. I’ve spun them a yarn that you’re the high and mighty Hoodoo in the you-know-what, a bigger bug than Mocata ever was, so the old lady’s all for giving him the go-by and sitting in round about your feet, but neither of them knows where Simon is, I’m certain. In fact they’ve no idea that he made a getaway last night after we got him to your flat, so what’s the drill now?’
‘I see, well, in that case you must …’ but Rex never learnt what De Richleau intended him to do for at that moment they were cut off. When he got through to the Museum again it was to break in on a learned conversation about South American antiques which was being conducted on another line and, realising that he had already exceeded his twenty minutes, he had no option but to hang up the receiver and dash out into the street.
Tanith was just coming down the steps of Schiaparelli’s as he turned the car to meet her. ‘Where now?’ he asked when she had settled herself beside him.
‘To Artelle. It is just opposite the barracks in Knightsbridge. I will not be more than five minutes this time, but she has a new idea for me. She is really a very clever woman, so I am anxious to hear what she has thought of.’
It was the longest speech he had so far heard her make, as their conversation the night before had been brief and frequently interrupted by Mocata. Her idiom was perfect, but the way in which she selected her words and the care with which she pronounced them made him ask suddenly. ‘You’re not English, are you?’
‘Yes,’ she smiled as they turned into Hyde Park, ‘but my mother was Hungarian and I have lived abroad nearly all my life. Is my accent very noticeable?’
‘Well, in a way, but it sounds just marvellous to me. Your voice has got that deep caressing note about it which reminds me of, well, if you want the truth, it’s like Marlene Dietrich on the talkies.’
She threw back her head and gave a low laugh. ‘If I believed that I should be tempted to keep it, and as it is I have been working so hard to get rid of it ever since I have been in England. It is absurd that I should not be able to speak my own language perfectly, yet I have talked English so little, except to foreign governesses when I was a young girl.’
‘And how old are you now, or is that a piece of rudeness?’
‘How old do you think?’
‘From your eyes you might be any age, but I’ve a feeling that you’re not much over twenty-two.’
‘If I were to live I should be twenty-four next January.’
‘Come now,’ he protested, laughing, ‘what a way to put it, that’s only a matter of nine months and no one could say you don’t look healthy.’
‘I am,’ she assured him gravely, ‘but let us not talk of death. Look at the colour of those rhododendrons. They are so lovely.’
‘Yes, they’ve jerked this Park up no end since I first saw it as a boy.’ As the traffic opened he turned the car into Knightsbridge and, two minutes later, Tanith got out at the discreet door of her French dressmaker.
While she was inside Rex considered the position afresh, and endeavoured to concoct some cryptic message purporting to come from the Duke, to the effect that she was not to attend the Sabbat but to remain in his care until it was all over. Yet he felt that she would never believe him. It was quite evident that she meant to be present at this unholy Walpurgis-Nacht gathering, and from what the old woman had said all Satanists regarded it with such importance that even warring factions among them sank their differences, for this one night of the year, in order to attend.
Obviously she could have no conception of what she was letting herself in for, but the very idea of her being mishandled by that ungodly crew made his biceps tighten with the desire to lash out at someone. He had got to keep her with him somehow, that was clear, but how?
He racked his mind in vain for a plausible story but, to his dismay, she rejoined him almost immediately and he had thought of nothing by the time they had turned into the Park again.
‘Well–tell me,’ she said softly.
‘Tell you what?’ he fenced. ‘That I think you’re very lovely?’
‘No, no. It is nice that you should have troubled to make pretty speeches about my accent and Marlene Dietrich, but it is time for you to tell me now of the real reason that brought you to Claridges this morning.’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘No.’
‘I wanted to take you out to lunch.’
‘Oh, please! Be serious—you have a message for me?’
‘Maybe, but even if I hadn’t, I’d have been right on the mat at your hotel just the same.’
She frowned slightly. ‘I don’t understand. Neither of us is free to give our time to that sort of thing.’
‘I’ve reached a stage where I’m the best judge of that,’ he announced, with the idea of trying to recover some of the prestige which seemed to be slipping from him.
‘Have you then crowned yourself with the Dispersion of Choronzon already?’
Rex suppressed a groan. Here they were off on the mumbo jumbo stuff again. He felt that he would never be able to keep it up, so instead of answering he turned the car with sudden determination out into the Kensington Road and headed towards Hammersmith.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked quickly.
‘To lunch with De Richleau,’ he lied. ‘I’ve got no message for you but the Duke sent me to fetch you because he wants to talk to you himself.’ It was the only story he could think of which just might get over.
‘I see, where is he?’
‘At Pangbourne.’
‘Where is that?’
‘Little place down the Thames, just past Reading.’
‘But that is miles away!’
‘Only about fifty.’
‘Surely he could have seen me before he left London.’
He caught her eyes, quick with suspicion, on his face, so he answered boldly: ‘I know nothing of that, but he sent me to fetch you, and what the Duke says goes.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Stop this car at once! I am going to get out.’