On the previous Tuesday night Mary had gone to bed in a very happy frame of mind. For the best part of two hours she had forgotten her loneliness and bitterness and had felt more like her normally cheerful self than at any time since she had lost her husband. Barney’s anxiety that she should break off her association with Ratnadatta had obviously been inspired by genuine concern for her, and to have once more a man eager to safeguard her well-being was just the tonic she had needed.
Even so, by Wednesday evening she had decided that leopards did not change their spots. There was no mistaking from his attitude that he would like to start an affair with her, so his wish to protect her from trouble could as equally well be put down to a selfish, as an unselfish, motive. Recalling the way in which he had left her in such a desperate plight five years ago, she felt convinced that his nature could not have altered, and that he would still use his gay attractiveness to get what he could out of any pretty woman, then leave her in the lurch the moment it suited him.
But, she thought, with a suggestion of cynical amusement, it was he, and not she, who was now playing with fire; for she knew his form, whereas he still knew nothing about her except what he had learnt since their meeting just over a fortnight before. Moreover, as a companion he was great fun, and there was no reason at all for her to hurry the dénouement of her plan; so why should she not enjoy as long as possible the benefits of the present situation? It would be time enough to tell him that she was the Mary McCreedy he had put in the family way at the age of eighteen and then deserted when he made the pace too hot for her to keep him on a string any longer. In this mood she began to look forward to Saturday, and when he called for her that evening she greeted him with her loveliest smile.
He had brought his car and, after dropping her at the Berkeley, left it in the garage at the bottom of Hay Hill, then rejoined her. As they had both determined to make the evening a success, it went well from the start. Both of them had healthy appetites, so enjoyed their dinners, and when they danced afterwards, just as had been the case before, they forgot everything else in the pleasure of the movement and rhythm. The time went all too quickly and when the restaurant began to empty he suggested that they should go on to Churchill’s. She willingly agreed, so they took a taxi round to Bond Street and spent two more happy hours dancing and talking in the dim rose-shaded light of the night-club.
It was getting on for three in the morning by the time he pulled up in his car with her in Cromwell Road. Having thanked him for a lovely evening before getting out, she said:
‘I’m afraid it’s too late to ask you in, but here is something you wanted the other evening.’ Then she leaned towards him quickly and kissed him.
He put out an arm to catch her to him; but she already had one hand on the door handle, so was able to slip out of his embrace and from the car on to the pavement.
‘Hi!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s only a sample. Don’t leave a poor fellow to go thirsting to his bed. Come back, there’s a sweet.’
‘No,’ she laughed, ‘that’s enough for now,’ and turned to run up the steps to the house.
Scrambling out, he hurried after her, and caught her by the arm.
‘No! Please Barney. Not in the street,’ she said quickly.
‘All right,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘But what about tomorrow? Today, rather. How about coming for a run in the car and lunching somewhere in the country?’
‘If it’s a fine day, I’d love to,’ she replied at once.
‘Splendid!’ he grinned. ‘I’ll pick you up then. Shall we say half-past eleven?’
Getting out her latch-key, she nodded. ‘I expect I’ll come to about ten; so that should be all right. Goodnight, my dear.’
‘Margot, you’re a honey! But it’s “good-morning”, and we’re all set now for a happy day together. Happy dreams!’
By mid-morning the weather prospects had worsened and, although it was not actually raining, grey clouds obscured the sky; but they decided to risk the weather and drive down to the Hut, at Wisley.
Just as he felt certain that she had been lying to him about what went on in Ratnadatta’s circle, she felt sure that he had lied to her about his being Lord Larne, and that his story of being in England only on a visit from Kenya was a wily stratagem put out in advance, which would provide him with the excuse that he had to return there should he wish to terminate any love affair that looked like becoming troublesome for him. So on their way down into Surrey, she amused herself by asking him, with apparent innocence, a number of awkward questions.
Although unsuspicious of her motive, he was far too old a hand at posing under a false identity to let himself be caught out easily, and by now he had had ample time to get used to thinking of himself, when with her, as a titled visitor from Kenya. About his having a car, he said, he had hired it for his stay; about the length of his visit, that it would depend on how long it took to complete the tie-ups for his travel agency, and that would take another month, at least; about where he was staying, that he was lucky in having many friends who were willing to put him up for a few nights at a time, so he moved around from one to another; about his home in Kenya, that he had a house in one of the better suburbs of Nairobi, but not a very large one as he was not particularly well off; about his parents, that both of them had died while he was still young, which was the truth; and he was able to keep her amused for quite a time by improvising on an imaginary upbringing.
She scored only one hit, and that was when she asked him to tell her where he was staying at the moment, in case she wanted to get in touch with him. In reply he had to give her the address of his flat in Warwick Square, but he said that it had been temporarily lent to him by a friend of his and, as he was a stranger there, any message for him should be sent care of Mr. Sullivan.
Having pushed him into using his own name and, as she saw it, as good as admitting that he had no right to a title, gave her a quiet laugh; but afterwards she wondered a little grimly how many young women he had led up the garden path by the idea that he might make them the Countess of Larne.
They lunched at the Hut Hotel and the rain held off until they were half way through the meal, but then for about half-an-hour it came down hard. Barney had been hoping that during the afternoon they would be able to go for a walk in the woods, and find some pleasant spot suitable for improving their relationship from the point it had reached in the early hours of that morning, but as the rain had made mossy banks and fallen tree-trunks too wet to sit on he had, for the time being, to confine his amorous intentions to getting closer to Mary mentally, in a long talk.
They discussed many things and found they had many tastes in common so, by the time they returned to the Hut for tea, a much greater degree of intimacy had been established between them, and he felt that his afternoon had been far from wasted. Unfortunately, however, he was debarred from following it up. That evening he had to attend a subscription concert got up by some of his Communist contacts at which one of their number was to receive a presentation on retirement from office; so he had to excuse himself to Mary for not asking her out to dinner by saying that he had a long-standing date, that he could not break, to dine with friends whom he had entertained when they were on a visit to Kenya.
Throughout the day he had purposely refrained from mentioning Ratnadatta, but he had every intention of doing so before they parted; so he was pleased when, on their way back to London, she raised the subject herself by remarking: ‘I take it that you will be going to Mrs. Wardeel’s on Tuesday and that I shall see you next there?’
He looked at her in feigned surprise. ‘Yes, I’m going. But surely you don’t mean to change your mind? You can’t let me down like that?’
‘Let you down?’ she frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, you promised me only last Tuesday that you would keep clear of Ratnadatta – for a while, anyway.’
She hesitated for a second, then took refuge in a prevarication. ‘I didn’t go out with him last night.’
‘No, bless you. But that’s all the more reason for avoiding him on Tuesday. You’ll escape having to make excuses, then, perhaps being wheedled into promising to go to his circle with him this coming Saturday.’
‘I ought to apologise to him for not turning up,’ she prevaricated again.
‘To hell with that! He’s up to no good, and you promised me to have no more to do with him for the time being.’
‘By that I thought you mean not going to his circle.’
‘I did, as I am sure that doing so is really dangerous for you. But I also think that when you talk to him he exerts a dangerous influence over you. So I really meant for you to keep away from him altogether.’
‘He couldn’t do me any harm at Mrs. Wardeel’s, especially if you are there with me.’
‘I don’t agree. You’ve refused to cut him out for good; so even talking to him again might tempt you into attending another of his meetings sooner than you otherwise would.’
As she did not reply, he put out a hand, took hers, and went on: ‘Forgive me if I am making a nuisance of myself, my sweet; but I’m becoming terribly fond of you, and I can’t bear the thought of your being led into the sort of filthy business that I believe is Ratnadatta’s real game. Give me a little time to find out a bit about him. If he turns out to be only an honest practitioner of Yoga, we’ll go to his parties together and learn to keep ourselves warm by rhythmic breathing, or whatever they do. But if you won’t agree to keep clear of him for a few weeks, you are going to be the cause of my having an awful lot of sleepless nights.’
Mary had been thinking furiously. Ten days ago it would have given her considerable pleasure to picture Barney twisting and turning in his bed, a prey to agonising thoughts of her being raped by Satanists; but that was so no longer. Her naturally generous nature made her feel that it would be horribly unkind to inflict such torture by imagination on anyone who was striving to protect her. But what would happen if she disobeyed Ratnadatta’s order, and failed to appear at Mrs. Wardeel’s on Tuesday? Would he descend upon her, demand an explanation and, if he did not consider it satisfactory, ill-wish her? It was a frightening thought. She had herself witnessed examples of the power of the Great Ram. Ratnadatta’s, although far less, might still be formidable. But she could say she had been ill and, if he had not actually been overlooking her at the time, how could he be certain that she was lying? The fact that Barney would be there, somewhere in the offing, to stand by her, finally outweighed her fears, and she said:
‘All right, then. I won’t go on Tuesday. But come to supper again afterwards and tell me how the meeting went.’
To that he cheerfully agreed and, a quarter-of-an-hour later, he set her down with a smiling farewell in Cromwell Road.
Before going to the subscription concert, Barney had another date to keep. It was with C.B. at a small hotel in Chelsea to which the Colonel sometimes asked his young men to come if he wished to see them on a Sunday and did not want to go up to the office.
At their last meeting on Friday, after it had emerged that Lothar was pressing Otto to keep an appointment with him at the old house in Cremorne, they had gone very thoroughly into the implications of this unexpected link between the twin of the scientist down in Wales and Ratnadatta’s circle.
Up to the point of that discovery, while reading Otto Khune’s statement, Barney had been strongly of the impression that the scientist had become the victim of hallucinations; but he had described the old mansion with such unmistakable clearness that, short of the whole document being an apparently pointless fraud, it seemed that a vision of it really must have been conveyed to him by psychic means.
C.B., who knew much more about such matters, had also pointed out that, according to the statement, the twins had been gifted from childhood with supernatural powers, and many times in their lives each had used those powers to inform himself about the situation of the other. Moreover Lothar, in whom the power was evidently greater, having used it with such vicious unscrupulousness to wreck his brother’s marriage, obviously had an intensely evil personality; so, his turning out to be a Satanist was not particularly surprising.
The passages in Otto’s statement describing his meeting with Lothar in 1950 made it clear that the latter was working for the Russians. The purpose of his visit to London then had been to induce Otto to return to Russia with him; his purpose now was, obviously, to tickle Otto’s vanity with the prospect of securing data which would give him new triumphs in his own scientific field, then to trick him in the exchange and make off with the formula of Britain’s latest rocket fuel. In any case, there could be little doubt that he was acting as a Communist agent.
The fact that he was both a Communist and a Satanist had raised the interesting question of how far might a tie-up exist between these two supposedly separate forces for evil? It could be that Lothar was using the old mansion in Cremorne from time to time simply as a guest. Satanism, as Verney knew, was world wide, and Black Magic still practised in every country under the sun; so Lothar could have secured an introduction from a Satanic circle to which he belonged abroad to the circle in London. If so, it did not follow that his hosts knew him to be a Soviet agent, or even that he was a Communist, and they themselves might play no part in Communist activities.
But Verney had told Barney that he regarded that as most unlikely. From the beginning he had believed that Teddy Morden had died as the victim of a human sacrifice to Satan. There was no factual evidence that he had ever gone to the mansion in Cremorne but the circumstantial evidence that he had done so was too strong not to be accepted. Not only had the nightmares that had afflicted Morden for several weeks before his death been of a nature to indicate very strongly that he was attending Black Magic ceremonies, but during them he had also several times mentioned an Indian. They knew Morden to have been a regular attendant at Mrs. Wardeel’s as, too, was Ratnadatta; and Barney had established the fact that the Indian was a link between her Theosophist circle and the Satanist circle at Cremorne, so it now seemed as good as certain that Ratnadatta had taken Morden there. But why should the Satanists have murdered him? His mission had had nothing to do with occultism of any kind. It had been the very down-to-earth business of finding out the ramifications of the Communist campaign to sabotage British industry. Yet it must have been something to do with that which had led him to Mrs. Wardeel’s and to cultivate Ratnadatta; and, later, the discovery of what Morden was up to that had led to his death.
If that was so, it followed that Lothar was not making use of the house at Cremorne just because he had the entrée to it as a Satanist; it must be because the Satanic circle there was hand-in-glove with the Communists.
To have reached this conclusion was most satisfactory to C.B. and Barney, as they felt that it gave them an excellent chance of killing two evil birds with one stone. But the problem remained of how best to arrange matters so as to get the maximum number of this devilish crew in the bag at one fell swoop.
Apparently Lothar came to the house at Cremorne only on Saturdays, so to raid the place on any other day would leave him at large. It was, too, on Saturday nights that the Satanist circle gathered there, so there was good reason to believe that he came up from some hide-out on that day to be present at their weekly celebration. If, therefore, Special Branch surrounded the place the following evening and raided it about eleven o’clock, they should get him in the net with his associates.
Against such a proceeding there was one snag. The law of England was cumbersome and, owing to its proper concern with protecting the rights of the individual, often made the task of the Security Services extremely difficult. Even should the Satanists be caught naked in the midst of an orgy, whoever owned the place, or was its legal tenant, could be charged only with using it for immoral purposes, and those caught in it with indecent behaviour. Lothar, if it transpired that he was accredited to the Soviet Embassy, might plead diplomatic privilege, and so escape scot-free.
On the other hand, if Otto had called on him there earlier in the day, it would be a very different matter. Once the brothers had actually met, even if Lothar was not caught with British scientific data on him, the tape recordings Forsby had secured, which gave the reason for their meeting, could be used to incriminate them.
In consequence, Verney had decided to have the house at Cremorne watched in case Otto gave way and came to the rendezvous next day. If he did, the place was to be raided that night. If not, they would hold their hands till next Saturday, then repeat the drill.
C.B. had then told Barney that he had to be out of London on other business for the next two nights, so would not be able to let him know what had happened till Sunday, and made an appointment for them to have a drink together that evening.
Barney found his Colonel in a snug little parlour at the back of the hotel and, having been provided with a drink, eagerly enquired what had taken place at Cremorne the previous day.
‘No luck, partner,’ C.B. replied at once. ‘As a matter of fact I had no great expectations anyway. Lothar gave Otto the choice of two Saturdays and it’s only natural that anyone under pressure should postpone the issue up till the last moment. It’s quite on the cards that he won’t give way at all or, if he does come up next Saturday, it will be with the intention of murdering Lothar. But if he doesn’t, Lothar won’t leave it at that. You can bet on it that rather than go back to Russia empty handed he’ll make some other move; and the more desperate he gets, the better chance we’ll have of pulling him in red-handed.’
‘Was Lothar seen to go to the house?’ Barney asked.
Verney shook his head. ‘From nine o’clock on in the morning no one resembling him turned into the alley leading to the place; and, as he is Otto’s twin, I was able to give Special Branch a pretty good description of him from that I obtained of Otto from Forsby. But, of course, he may have come up from the country on Friday and spent the night there, or perhaps his psychic faculties told him that Otto did not mean to play, so there was no point in his turning up himself.’
‘While they were keeping observation did the police pick up anything fresh about the place?’
‘Nothing. Apart from deliveries of food, it had the appearance all day of being deserted. Between nine and ten in the evening five cars arrived containing seven people, and a further twenty-one came to it on foot. From about four in the morning they began to leave and by six they had all dispersed. None of them appeared to have been drunk or could have been pulled in for any other reason; and, anyway, I’d given orders that, unless Lothar and Otto had both put in an appearance, nothing was to be done which would prematurely stir up this nest of vipers.’
After thinking for a moment, Barney said: ‘It looks to me, Sir, as if Otto is true blue and means to dig his toes in; so how about trying to get him to act as a stool-pigeon? Seeing that he has such good cause to hate Lothar’s guts, he might.’
C.B. smiled. ‘Good mark to you, young feller, for thinking of it; but I’ve already cast that one out. In any ordinary case that line would be well worth trying, but in this it would be running too much of a risk. Otto might agree to play but, as Lothar is overlooking him, there is quite a chance that our enemy would tumble to what was going on. Once he realised that we are after him he might skip, and we don’t want that. I think that, short of Forsby reporting some quite unexpected move, we’ll continue to play it quietly for another week.’
To decrease the possibility of Mary – or Margot, as he knew her – becoming further involved with Ratnadatta, Barney would have liked to see the Satanist headquarters at Cremorne closed down without delay; but he appreciated that to raid it at any time other than when a meeting was being held there would be throwing away an opportunity to break up the circle much more effectively.
For a while they continued to discuss various aspects of the affair, then Barney finished his drink, excused himself, and drove to his rooms in Warwick Square to change out of his country clothes into things more suitable for attending a Communist social.
On the Tuesday Mary made similar preparations to those she had a fortnight before, then waited impatiently, through what seemed one of the longest evenings she had ever spent, for Barney to join her.
At last he arrived, smiling as usual. Within seconds of greeting him she asked anxiously: ‘Did Ratnadatta speak to you about me? Was he very angry?’
Barney gave her a shrewd look. ‘You are frightened of him, aren’t you? It makes me all the more glad that I prevented you from seeing him this evening. No; he didn’t even mention you, although I managed to get him to myself for five minutes.’
As she led the way into the sitting-room, she enquired: ‘How did you get on with him?’
‘Not as well as I had hoped. I only prised him away with difficulty from an old trout smothered in rocks, and he was impatient to get back to her. It’s pretty clear that he is out to get anyone with some special asset – money, position or beauty – into his net, and in my own case I was banking on my title to act as bait. I think it did to some extent, because he didn’t actually turn me down. But I imagine that for the time being he’s got his hands full with yourself and the female Croesus. I hinted that I thought the mediums I had seen at Mrs. Wardeel’s a bit suspect, and understood that past-masters in Yoga could produce the real thing, then suggested that as he was an Indian he might perhaps know of compatriots living in London who were practitioners of the art.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘That he did not, as he had never interested himself in Yoga.’
Mary’s glance wavered. ‘How very strange!’
Barney’s smile held no hint of accusation, and he replied: ‘Not necessarily. He may not have thought me a good Yoga subject. He did say, though, that he was in touch with occultists who had passed a higher degree of initiation than any I was likely to meet at Mrs. Wardeel’s, and that he might, perhaps, sometime introduce me to some of them. But he thought that before we talked of the matter further, it would be a good thing if I acquired a better background knowledge of the occult by continuing to attend the lectures at Mrs. W.’s for another month or so.’
‘I see; and do you intend to do that?’
‘Certainly; if he insists on it. But, as I am pretty good at selling myself, I hope to persuade him to adopt a more forthcoming attitude next week. Let’s forget all this now, though, and talk of something else. To be honest, too, I had no time to get a snack before going to the meeting, so I’m absolutely famished.’
The table was already laid. Glad to drop the subject, Mary told him to sit down at it, and harried into her kitchenette. For a first course, as the weather had turned cold, she had heated up some tomato soup, to which she now added a good dollop of cream. As she did so she thought first how decent it was of Barney to have refrained from tackling her about Ratnadatta’s having denied all knowledge of Yoga, and then of the way that the Indian had stalled him off.
She felt very glad that Ratnadatta had, otherwise he might have sounded Barney out over a dinner next Saturday then, perhaps, have taken him on to the Temple and given him a sight from the balcony of what went on there. A fortnight ago, with the idea of leading Barney to believe that she was a bold and sophisticated woman, she had started to tell him about what she had seen herself; only the spilling of the wine had caused her afterwards to insist that she had been fooling, and now she was very glad about that, because her attitude towards him had undergone a subtle change. She knew she would be ashamed if he found out that she really had let Ratnadatta take her to such a party and, instead of breaking with him, still refused to give any promise that she would not go with him to the Temple again.
But soon such thoughts were driven from her mind by Barney’s gay, inconsequent chatter, as they tucked in to the good things she had provided for their supper and shared another bottle of the excellent Hock. Afterwards they sat down side by side on the sofa and she felt sure that, as she had kissed him on Saturday, this evening he would display no ultra chivalrous scruples about being in her flat, but soon start making love to her.
She had meant him to from the beginning and now, her original motive temporarily forgotten, she knew that she wanted him to. But, on a typical feminine impulse to postpone the moment a little longer, she lit a cigarette and asked: ‘What was the lecture about this evening?’
‘The Vedas,’ he replied, ‘and how Theosophy ties up with the sacred writings of the Hindus. I can’t say that it gave me a yen to take up the study of Indian mythology as a hobby, but at least it made more sense than they gave us last week about old Koot Hoomi and the Master the Count. The second part of the show was a bit of a flop, though. They put a large table in the middle of the room and six people and a medium sat round it. Then they set about receiving spirit messages by table rapping. It was a slow and dreary business, and only one came through that was of any interest.’
‘And what was that?’ she asked.
Turning his head he looked straight into her eyes, and said: ‘Some big shot up on the astral plane wanted to know why you hadn’t reported for duty.’
Mary jumped to her feet; her mouth fell open, her blue eyes went round with terror, and she cried, ‘No, Barney; no! You don’t mean it!’
He had got the type of reaction he had played for, but far more strongly than he had expected. Standing up, he exclaimed: ‘Hi, steady on! Of course not. I was only fooling.’
‘Oh, thank God for that!’ she gasped. ‘Thank God for that! You gave me a most awful fright.’ Next moment her mouth began to tremble and she burst into tears.
Swiftly he gathered her into his arms, and made little comforting noises while for several minutes she sobbed upon his chest. Then, when her sobs eased a little, he said: ‘My sweet, I’m terribly sorry that I scared you so badly, but I had to know the truth. You’ve given yourself away now, and you really must come clean with me. You’ve got in deeper than I thought, and…’
‘No… really,’ she sniffled. ‘I haven’t seen Ratnadatta recently. I swear I haven’t. Not since I promised you I wouldn’t.’
‘Well, that’s some comfort. But tonight he blew wide open your story about Yoga being his game. It’s nothing of the kind, and you had started to tell me about it that night at the Hungaria when we spilt the wine. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured tearfully.
He kissed her on the forehead, then said, with a frown: ‘You’re a darling, Margot, and what puzzles me is how a decent girl like you could even contemplate taking part in such beastliness.’
‘I… I have a very good reason.’
‘Tell me what it is?’
‘No, please don’t ask me.’
‘Is it something to do with your past?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right, then. Don’t treat me as though I were a starry-eyed youth who’d never heard the facts of life. At times everyone does things they are ashamed of afterwards. I don’t give a damn what you’ve done.’
‘It’s nothing I am ashamed of.’
‘Then why on earth won’t you tell me what it is?’
‘I can’t. Really I can’t. If I did you might insist on trying to help me.’
‘All the more reason to go ahead.’
‘No. I’m not going to let you run into danger, just because I’ve been fool enough to bite off more than I can chew.’
‘Margot, you must tell me! You’ve got yourself in the hell of a mess. It’s as clear as daylight that you’re scared stiff of something. I love you, my dear, and…’
She suddenly lifted her face to his and, her eyes still misty with tears, cried, ‘Do you mean that?’
For a second Barney was a little taken aback. He enjoyed his life as a bachelor and did not want to put it into her head that he was on the verge of proposing to her; so he replied with a smile, ‘Wanting to protect someone is one of the first symptoms, isn’t it? If so, I’ve got it. And I’m determined to free you from the cause of your terror. But I can’t fight your battle if you leave me in the dark. That’s why you must tell me how you got drawn in to this thing.’
‘Well … all right, then. I’ll give you my reason for leading Ratnadatta on until he took me to his Temple. But nothing more. Nothing. You understand? It was because I hoped it might lead to my being avenged on someone.’
Barney gave her a surprised look. ‘Really! I shouldn’t have thought you were a vindictive sort of girl. Of course, when a hurt has had lasting consequences, wanting to get one’s own back is very natural. Still, what you tell me surprises me all the more because I thought you had become a believer in Reincarnation.’
‘I have. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘Then you can’t have consciously taken in one of its principal teachings. As I understand it, every evil deed has to be paid for either in this or some future life. There is no escaping that, but payment may be made in one of two ways. Either the injured party exercises his right to return tit for tat or, failing that, Karma takes the form of appearing to have some natural cause – like a brick falling on the head of a chap who at some time in the past had hit someone on the head with a hammer. That someone could have hit him back and, providing the blow was no harder, not received a bad mark. But progress to a higher state can be made only by learning forgiveness, and refusing to take such opportunities. If you are still running around with a tomahawk, you’re not going to stand much chance of getting yourself promoted from one of the lower forms in this vale of tears.’
They were still standing in front of the fireplace, he with one arm about her, and she looking down. Now she raised her head, and said: ‘I suppose you are right. I heard it all, of course; but, somehow, I failed to apply it to myself.’
‘You will, though, won’t you?’ he urged. ‘Please Margot. Give up this idea of seeking revenge.’
Suddenly she began to laugh. She was still wrought up and her laughter held a slightly hysterical note. It had just occurred to her that, although completely ignorant of the fact, Barney was also implying that she should give up her plan for being revenged on him and that, if she did, in some future life as a young girl, someone would put him in the family way.
Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick shake and said, sharply: ‘Stop that! This is nothing to laugh about.’
She stopped and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. It was just a thought that crossed my mind. You would laugh, too, if I told you. But no, perhaps you wouldn’t; and, anyway, I won’t.’ Fishing out her handkerchief she blew her nose, and went on more calmly. ‘You are quite right, my dear. I must try to forget past wrongs.’
‘That’s better. Then you’ll have no cause for seeing Ratnadatta again, ever. You have no definite date with him, have you?’
‘No; er … not exactly. He was going to let me know when he would take me to the Temple for my next step towards initiation. But he said that might not be for some time.’
‘If he does, you must let me know, and I’ll deal with him. But I want your solemn promise that you’ll have nothing further to do with him or any other of these Satanists.’
She sighed, then gave him a wan smile. ‘Very well. I’ll give up the project I’d set my mind on. But … but say he comes here and tries to force me into going with him? Like all these people he can call to his aid supernatural power. I’m sure of that. Perhaps I won’t be able to resist him.’
Barney thought for a moment, then he said: ‘You were brought up as a Catholic, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ She sighed again. ‘But for a long time past I haven’t been a practising one.’
‘No matter. I’ll bet you’ve still got a crucifix somewhere about the place.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I would never have parted with it.’
‘All right, then. Keep it with you from now on. Carry it in your bag wherever you go. If Ratnadatta comes here, or waylays you in the street, produce it. I know little enough about this sort of thing, but I’m certain that the sight of a crucifix scares the pants off any Satanist. Hold it in front of his face, and tell him to get back to the Devil.’
‘Oh, Barney, what a comfort to me you are,’ she murmured, throwing an arm about his neck. Their mouths met in their first really long, rich kiss. As it ended he picked her up, laid her on the sofa, knelt down beside her, and said:
‘You are rewarding me for something I’ve not yet done. But you must know that I’m crazy about you, and I’d be crazier still if I refused to accept a little payment in advance.’
‘It’s not payment,’ she breathed. ‘It’s just because I like you. I can’t help it’
Half an hour went by in what seemed to them only a few minutes; then the clock on the mantelpiece chimed twelve. Gently releasing herself from his embrace she said: ‘Barney, you must go. By modern standards no one seems to bother much about what goes on up to midnight; but if someone in the house saw you leaving my flat much after that they’d think the worst.’
Reluctantly he stood up, and grinned at her. ‘I’ve never yet wanted less to say “goodnight” to anyone. But needs must, if it’s a matter of your reputation.’
‘When will I see you again?’ she asked.
He thought for a moment, and mentally cursed the fact that on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings he was committed to Branch meetings which it would be neglecting his job to cut. ‘I’m afraid not until Saturday. We might go to the Berkeley again. Anyhow I’ll call for you, in a black tie, at half-past-seven.’
‘Can’t we meet before that?’
‘I’m sorry, but for the next three evenings I’ve engagements I can’t very well wriggle out of. But what about lunch? Are you free tomorrow?’
‘No. I have to take part in a dress show at a big store down in Croydon. And I’ve another in the West End on Friday, which would put lunch out of the question. But Thursday would be all right.’
He shook his head. ‘Stymied again. That’s the one day I have to be out of London. I have to run down to Birmingham to interest some travel agents there in trips to Kenya.’
Inwardly she winced. That at such a moment he should have brought up again the Kenya background, which she felt certain was false, as an excuse not to give her lunch, affected her as badly as if he had hit her. She began to wonder how he meant to spend his evenings.
Quite unconscious that this cover for a visit he had arranged to pay to Dagenham, with two Communist officials who were going down to meet local Comrades there, had caused her such distress, Barney prepared to depart. That her ‘goodnight’ kiss was only lukewarm he put down to her being emotionally exhausted. With a cheerful admonition to keep her chin up and be looking her most beautiful when he called for her on Saturday evening, he left her and tiptoed down the stairs.
On the three evenings that followed he duly played his part at Branch meetings as a disgruntled worker out to seize on any pretext to make trouble. One of the pay-offs that he received from time to time as a result of this bellicose attitude came to him in a pub, while he was drinking there with some of his Communist contacts, just before closing time on the Friday night. Feeling that it was of sufficient importance to call for reporting without delay, he looked in at the office on Saturday morning.
After a short wait, Verney had him shown in, told him to sit down, and said: ‘Well, young feller. Saturday’s an unusual day for you to call. What’s cooking?’
‘I’m afraid that the C.G.T. election is going to be rigged, Sir,’ he announced with a frown.
The Colonel gave him a sharp glance. ‘Got any proof of that?’
‘No; it’s a tip I was given last night after a meeting in Hammersmith. One of my Red buddies had one over the odds and became confidential. He told me that if I wanted to make a bit of easy money I could do it by laying bets that Tom Ruddy would not top the poll for General Secretary. I played doubtful, but he swore he wouldn’t let a pal like me down, and that it was a cert; only I must keep it under my hat and not get people talking by making bigger bets than a pound or two with any one person.’
‘That’s bad news, but interesting. It confirms a report I had yesterday. Jimmy Sawyer, who is on the same job up in Manchester as you are down here, telephoned me. He said he’s sure there is something cooking, because some of the Commies up there are going round giving six to four that Ruddy won’t get the job.’
‘Perhaps it’s just a propaganda stunt, and they think it worth risking some of their funds to impress waverers with their confidence in their own man.’
‘Maybe. We can only hope that’s all there is behind it.’
‘If Ruddy’s popularity with the rank and file goes for anything, they’ll have to do an awful lot of rigging with the votes to keep him out.’
C.B. laid a finger alongside his big nose. ‘That’s not the only way they could keep him out, sonny.’
‘No, they might stage a convenient “accident”.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of; so I’m going to get the Special Branch to offer him police protection. The trouble is that he’s as tough as they come, and such an independent-minded cuss, that I doubt if he’ll accept it. He’ll probably take the view that it’s preferable to run any risk there may be rather than let his supporters think he no longer has the nerve to face rough meetings without a couple of plainclothes men tagging round with him.’
At that moment the buzzer on the Colonel’s desk sounded. Switching on the inter-com. he said, ‘Yes … All right; put him through.’ Then he picked up the telephone receiver. ‘Verney here. Morning, Dick. Have you rung up to let me know that your baby left last night for London?’
After listening for a full minute, he spoke again. ‘I see. Damn the man! If he was going to give way at all, why the hell couldn’t he do as he was asked and come up here where Special Branch have everything laid on to pinch the two of them? This is going to be very different and damnably difficult to make watertight. If L. gave us the slip and got away across the moors with the formula it would be nearly as bad as O. himself sneaking out of the country and joining the Reds. I don’t think we dare risk letting them meet the way they plan to now. On the other hand, if we lay in wait and pulled L. in, unless he had already received the goods from O., we could hold him only temporarily on some minor charge. For all we know, too, he may even have a diplomatic passport and we’d have to let him go right away. In either case, he’d soon be able to agree another rendezvous with O., and if you failed to find out about it we’d be sunk. Hang on a minute. Let me think.’
There was a longish pause, then Verney went on. ‘Look, Dick. You know I’ve every faith in you, but it wouldn’t be fair to throw the whole responsibility for a thing like this on your shoulders. I shall come down myself this afternoon. When I’ve fixed things up this end I’ll send you a signal what time to expect me.’
When he had hung up, he turned to Barney and said: ‘As you will have guessed, that was Forsby. For the past few nights Lothar has been working on Otto till he’s nearly driven him off his rocker. Thursday night’s tape recording disclosed that he had given in and agreed to come up and meet Lothar in London today. When Forsby got that yesterday morning, he naturally expected Otto to give notification that he was going on weekend leave. He warned his boys to be ready to tail Otto and got a signal ready to send me the moment Otto left the Station. But Otto didn’t leave; he sat tight. Forsby supposed that he had changed his mind and decided to dig his toes in again after all. But that wasn’t the case. The explanation emerged from last night’s tape recording.’
C.B. knocked his pipe out, and went on. ‘Apparently Lothar came through on their psychic wave about four o’clock this morning. He was doing a check up to make sure that Otto did not mean to let him down and, when he found that Otto was still there in Wales, he threatened to put a curse on him that would kill him. Otto protested that he had meant to come but had been prevented at the last moment. When he had gone to the top boy at the Station, Sir Charles Remmington-Rudd, to tell him that he meant to go to London for the week-end, Sir Charles had said he could not let him. A signal had just come in to notify them that an American egg-head was flying down that afternoon to spend a couple of nights at the Station. The Yank is a fuel expert and, as Otto is our star fuel boffin, he had to be there to do the honours.’
‘I get it,’ Barney put in. ‘Otto realised that he dared not ignore his boss’s order to stay put, as if he had they would have tumbled to it that there was something fishy about his trip to London. There would have been a hue and cry after him. We should have been alerted to pick him up this end and have him tailed. He saw himself being pinched when he kept his appointment with Lothar and, as he would have had the fuel formula on him, both of them would have been for the high jump.’
‘Precisely. That’s what he told Lothar. Whether Lothar thought he was lying or not we don’t know. Anyway, he made it plain that he was not prepared to wait much longer. He indicated that, since the mountain would not come to him, he meant to go to the mountain. He demanded that Otto should select some lonely spot a few miles outside the Station, which it would be easy for him to find, and that he should meet him there with the formula on Sunday afternoon. Otto gave him as a rendezvous a place called Lone Tree Hill, and described its situation. Lothar said that he would be there sometime between two o’clock and four, and that Otto was to go there dressed in an old raincoat and beret, so that he would be easily recognisable from a distance. He added that, if Otto failed to turn up, or betrayed him afterwards, he would be dead in nine days. And that is that.’
Barney nodded. ‘I don’t wonder you are worried, Sir. It’s going to be a tricky business to draw a cordon round an exposed hill-top without Lothar spotting what you are up to.’
‘I know; but I may decide to intervene before they meet. Anyway, it’s no good trying to settle on a plan before we’ve talked the whole thing over with Forsby.’
‘We!’ Barney echoed.
‘Yes. As this business ties up with your Satanist Circle at Cremorne I’m taking you with me. I’m still hoping to be able to pull in and grill both these birds. If I can, something may emerge from what they say that will give you further light on this Indian you are after. The Research Experimental Station is right off the map; but it’s got its own airstrip, so we can fly down. I believe they’ve got some sort of hook-up with Farnborough. I’ll have my P.A. find out. Anyway, we’d better have a fairly early lunch and start immediately afterwards. Off you go now. Pack a bag and meet me at the Rag at a quarter to one.’
Barney did not argue. Annoyed as he was at having to cancel his plans for the evening, this was a matter of duty and his Chief had given him an order. He said only, ‘Very good, Sir. See you at your Club at twelve-forty-five,’ then left the room, went down in the lift, got a taxi and had himself driven to Warwick Square.
Having let himself into his flat he at once tried to telephone Mary, but there was no reply. As she was evidently out and might not return till lunch time, he rang up Constance Spry’s, ordered a big bunch of roses to be sent to her by hand, and dictated a card to go with them. When he had finished packing, he wrote her a note saying how disappointed he was that he would not be seeing her over the week-end, but that he expected to be back on Monday and, unless he telephoned her to the contrary, would she please forgive him and go out with him that evening.
As they had agreed that, in the event of any trouble, she should ring him up, and she had not done so, he had no particular cause to be worried about her. On the way up to Pall Mall he posted his letter, then gave his mind to speculating on the strange business that was taking him down to Wales.
The roses were delivered to Mary some ten minutes after she got back from her week-end shopping. As she took them from their cellophane covering she was delighted but, when she read the card that accompanied them, her face fell sadly. It was in a young woman’s rounded hand, so obviously not even written by Barney, and it said only, Terribly sorry to have to put you off tonight, but have to be out of London on urgent business over week-end. Love, B.
She felt it to be the most shocking let down. For a moment she was near bursting into tears; but, swiftly, her self-pity was overcome by angry resentment. Like a fool – like a sentimental ninny – like some little teenager who had hooked her first beau – for the past three and a half days she had been almost counting the moments until she should see Barney again. She knew that he had no right to a title, felt certain that the Kenya story was a myth, and all he said about starting up a travel agency there a pack of lies; yet, even so, she had allowed him to sell himself to her again. Those merry brown eyes, the mop of thick dark curly hair, the spontaneous grin that so frequently lit up his brown, healthy face, had bewitched her into believing that he had become a different person from the man she had known five years before. He had played on her loneliness by giving her the only good times she had known since her husband’s death, and played on her fears by insisting that she needed his protection.
Looking back over the days since she had given him supper for the first time in her flat, she thought that she must have been out of her wits to accept without question his glib assertions that for eight out of ten evenings he had had long-standing engagements to dine with old friends. He had even left her on that excuse, after taking her down to Wisley the previous Sunday. To support himself he must have some sort of job, but no normal job entailed a man’s having to leave London for the week-end at a moment’s notice on a Saturday morning. The explanation was clear. He must have a mistress and quite probably was amusing himself with several other women. No doubt he had had a date with one of them on Sunday evening, and now quite unexpectedly one of them had let him know that morning that she was free to slip off for a week-end in the country with him. He had not changed by an iota, but was still the self-indulgent cynic who took his fun where he could find it and, for any woman who was not with him at the moment, it was a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
Angry and miserable, she ate her solitary lunch; but, by the time she finished it, she had decided that it was stupid to spend the rest of the day alternately fuming and moping. She would get out in the fresh air in the afternoon and go to a cinema in the evening.
Putting on her things she went out, walked down to the Earls Court Road, and took a bus to Wimbledon. A blustering wind was blowing which made it less pleasant than when she had last been there, but she strode determinedly across the Common and, after a two-hour walk, ate a hearty tea. By then the wind had dropped and a sunny evening bid fair to usher in good weather for early May, so she did not hurry home and it was getting on for seven o’clock when she got back to the Cromwell Road. Feeling much less depressed after her outing, she pushed open the front door of the house; and there, in the downstairs hall, she found Ratnadatta waiting for her.