Simon and Richard cowered back. Nearly exhausted from the horrors they had faced earlier in the night, they now felt that the end had come. It could only be that the Prince had exerted his powers to the utmost to enable this manifestation in the form of their friend to cross the barrier. They expected that, within a moment, the smiling face would become distorted with malevolence and hatred, that the form would suddenly turn into some monstrous creature that would seize upon and destroy them. Sweating with fear, they shrank away, their arms extended to fend off this menace that the Prince had called up from Hell.
But de Richleau stood his ground. The figure before them had not only ignored the sign of the Cross and his abjuration. It had actually stepped on the line of salt spread round the circle. For him that could mean only one thing.
With a gasp he thrust out his hand, grasped Rex by the arm and cried. Then it’s really you!’
Next moment he laughed and hurried on, ‘After the apparitions we’ve seen tonight, I just couldn’t believe it. Oh, thank God, you’ve come to us! We couldn’t have held out much longer. But from the way you behaved this evening, I thought …’
‘No time to talk of that now.’ Rex cut in. ‘We’re not out of the wood yet, by a long sight. And we’ve not a moment to lose. If anyone is awake and challenges us, leave everything to me. Come on now.’
Hardly able to take in the fact that they had survived the night’s terrible ordeal, and now stood a good chance of escaping, they followed Rex as quietly as they could out of the circular room and along a succession of corridors until they came through a doorway to a courtyard. Eagerly they breathed in the fresh, cold air and looked upwards to see the myriad of stars above.
On the further side of the courtyard a flight of over a hundred steps led downward. They were very steep, broken in places, and had no handrail alongside them. One false step and anyone could have hurtled head over heels to the bottom. With Rex still leading and the others, each with a hand on the shoulder of the one preceding him, they made the perilous descent in safety.
A walk of two hundred yards brought them to the airstrip. It was in darkness, and No one was about. Telling the others to wait where they were, Rex boarded one of the two smaller passenger ‘planes and flashed a torch on the instrument board in the cockpit. A moment later, he was back on the ground and said in a low voice:
‘No good. She’s practically out of gas. And we daren’t refuel her. The noise would rouse those lousy Andeans. Several of them sleep in that hut near the pump. I’ll take a look at the other. If she’s dry too, we’re scuppered.’
Anxious moments passed while he clambered into the other aircraft and made a swift survey of her fitness for flight. Then he leaned out and beckoned to them. When they had scrambled aboard, and settled themselves in the bucket seats, he said:
‘She’s nearly full, thank God. Ample gas to take us to the coast. But I dare not attempt a night flight through the mountains. We’d sure end up as deaders. But I can fly us across to Potosi, the old Inca city south-east of the lake. I went over there out of curiosity not long ago. It’s now an area of ruins, with only a handful of peasants squatting in some of the courtyards, where they’ve put up shacks and lean-tos. Plenty of places there where we can lie up for the rest of the night. Then, come dawn, we’ll fly down to Iquique.’
The others caught his last words only indistinctly, as he was already revving up the engine. It vibrated for two minutes, then the aircraft took off smoothly. The moon was now in its first quarter. Its light silvered the placid water of the lake and, as they flew over the land on the far bank, was sufficient to throw up groups of trees here and there in a flattish landscape. They had been in the air for barely a quarter of an hour when Rex brought the ‘plane down with the expertise of long practice. For a couple of hundred yards it tore through low scrub, then came to a halt.
As they were about to climb out, Richard said huskily, ‘My throat’s like a lime-kiln. I’d give fifty quid for a drink—even a glass of water.’
‘Me, too,’ agreed Simon. ‘So dry I can hardly swallow.’
‘Soon put that right,’ Rex replied cheerfully. “These aircraft are always furnished with supplies for several days, in case they have to make a forced landing in this bloody wilderness. Look in the tail, and you’ll find lots of liquor.’
Without losing a moment, Richard and Simon opened up the several small hampers containing emergency stores of tinned food and drink. Hastily pushing aside bottles of Pisco and Brandy, they seized on some Coca-Cola and, together with the Duke, avidly quenched their thirst.
Rex had left the aircraft. When they joined him on the ground, he pointed to a low rise about half a mile away. On it there was a patch of black, one end of which made a sharp angle which stood out against the sky line. As they looked in that direction, he said:
‘We’re in luck. I doubted whether at night I’d be able to locate that place so as to land fairly near it. But it’s sure the building I had in mind for us to lie low in. Let’s get going to it.’
Richard turned back to the ’plane. ‘O.K. But I’m still as hungry as a hunter. We’ll take some of those emergency stores with us, so that we can have a meal when we get there.’ Simon followed him back to the aircraft, and together they repacked one of the hampers with their choice of things to eat and drink.
When they emerged, carrying the hamper between them, the four friends set off through the low scrub. It proved hard going; but, twenty minutes later, they reached the rise, and saw that the ruined building on it had been a church.
‘There must have been an Inca temple here once,’ the Duke remarked. ‘Wherever the Spaniards found pagan temples, both here and in Mexico, they pulled them down and built a church on the ruins.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ Rex nodded. ‘There was probably an Inca village here, too, once. This place is two miles or more from the ruins of the city. That’s why I chose it. The Andean peons are harmless enough, but we don’t want them nosing around.’
As they entered the roofless church, they saw by the moonlight that the greater part of the floor was covered with rubble; but the altar was intact and, carved in the stone above it, there was a tall cross. Beckoning to the others to follow him, the Duke scrambled over the debris to the altar and, for some minutes, they stood silently before it, rendering thanks for their preservation.
Simon and Richard then opened up some of the tins of food they had brought sliced up chicken and ham on to cardboard plates and poured drinks into the cups. As Rex watched them, he said with a grin, ‘Guess the eyes of you boys are going to prove larger than your tummies.’
Richard laughed. ‘Maybe we’ve overdone it, but what we don’t eat we can take back to the aircraft when it’s daylight.’
As soon as they had satisfied their first hunger, de Richleau said, ‘Now, Rex, we’re all anxious to know what you’ve been up to. I confess that you fooled me last night. I simply could not believe that you were really in favour of this Black Power movement. I could only conclude that you were yourself no longer, and that these Satanists had caused a devil to take possession of your mind. But the fact that we owe our escape from that hellish place to you shows that I was right off the mark. What is the explanation of this mystery?’
Rex shrugged his great shoulders. It’s simple enough. As Silvia’s told you, she was my girlfriend. A couple of years before I met her, Don Salvador—or the Prince, as he calls himself in these parts, had interested her in the occult. She told me about it, and tried to get me to play, too. With the memories I have about Simon, Tanith and that devil Mocata. I naturally declined and did my best to make her understand what a hellishly dangerous game she was playing.
‘Mark you, she’d not let on that Don Salvador was an Adept following the Left-Hand Path, so I wasn’t particularly worried when she persisted in continuing to attend his “seances”, as she called them. Then one night, when I was waiting for her in her apartment, she returned a bit potted. She talked a lot of what I took at the time to be nonsense, about how in fifteen or twenty years’ time, there would be world-wide revolution, out of which would arise a new state of things. There would be one supreme government, that would control everything and, if I liked, she felt sure she could get me made a member of it.
‘Naturally, I laughed and said that would be O.K. by me. At that point she seemed to sober up, and refused to say any more for the time being. I assumed that she’d gotten this pipe dream at one of Don Salvador’s occult sessions, so I thought no more about it. But the next night we spent together she brought up the subject again. Evidently, in the meantime, she’d had a talk with Don Salvador and he’d O.K.d her approaching me seriously. She said they needed someone like me, with wide experience of banking, to take charge of their financial interests. Then she swore me to secrecy and told me about their Black Power movement. According to her it was simply a means to an end, a way to bring about Peace on Earth, and a good time for all.
‘By then, the penny had dropped. I’d tumbled to it that Don Salvador was a real topline Black, and that he aimed to serve his Infernal Master by letting loose all hell. The idea of his pulling off this ghastly coup properly scared the pants off me. But I realised that it was up to me to get in on this thing, and somehow scotch it. I played hard to get for a bit, putting up various snags to the scheme that I knew she could find answers to. Then, when she spoke about the power I would have, I agreed to play.
‘The next time I saw her, she was a bit worried. It emerged that Don Salvador was not altogether happy about taking me on. He needed a guarantee that I wouldn’t rat on them. They could only be sure I wouldn’t if I agreed to cut myself off entirely from the life I was then leading, and perform some act that would prevent my returning to it.’
‘I see,’ murmured the Duke. That is why you stole a million from your bank.’
‘You’ve hit it, Greyeyes. Of course the thing they didn’t realise, when they put up the idea, was that I’d not become a wanted criminal. I knew that my family would move heaven and earth to keep quiet what I had done, and anti-up the million I’d made off with from their private funds. All I have to do when I reappear is to repay the bank by selling a big block of my own shares, and everyone I know will be glad to see me back. But the fact that I did commit the crime and was apparently willing to throw up everything for the cause, convinced Don Salvador that I was on the level.’
‘Have you now got the low-down on the whole organisation?’ Richard enquired.
‘Yes, more or less. The Prince is the Chief of a Coven, probably the most powerful in the world, as each of its twelve members are in turn the Chiefs of other Covens which dominate the whole Satanic set-up in great areas.
‘Von Thumm is his number two, and responsible for the settlement down at the Sala. Under him it’s run by the Moor El Aliz, Harry Benito, a Jamaican, and an Andean Indian whose name is Pucara. They have a batch of Zombies who act as their servants and, if need be, could be called on to help keep order. But, so far, that hasn’t proved necessary. All the workers down there are sweet innocents. They haven’t an idea that they’re being used as the tools of Satanism. Their heads are in the clouds, with visions of securing real and permanent equality with whites.
‘Lincoln B. Glasshill is number three in the hierarchy but, like von Thumm, he comes up here only occasionally, to take his orders from the Prince. The others, too, all have quarters in one city or another where they spend a part of their time. There are two other Negroes: a tall, wall-eyed fellow called Ebolite, and Mazambi, who’s head was like a skull.
‘Pierre Dubecq is white. He is the Prince’s top pilot, and with the assistance of the half-Spanish Miguel Cervantes, runs the aircraft. The men who service them are Andeans. They are quite good mechanics, but in other ways are ignorant types and they are not allowed inside the fortress. The green-clad chaps who fetch and carry inside are Andeans, too. But they know nothing of what goes on behind the scenes, because they are always kept under light hypnosis.
‘Kaputa, a fat Babu, is in charge of them. He is an ace-high hypnotist, and the only one who lives up here permanently. Singra, a Pakistani, and Ben Yussuf, an Egyptian, make up this diabolical thirteen.
‘For most of the time since mid-December, I’ve been up here. Radio brings me quotations for all currencies on the principal markets daily, and I have a transmitter by which I can send code messages to the Prince’s agents in Geneva, New York. London, Paris and the rest, instructing them to buy or sell. Before I arrived, the Babu used to handle their foreign exchange, but now he’s become more or less my assistant.
‘Down at the Sala, half a dozen of the innocents are employed as accountants and clerks. They keep the ledgers, showing all expenses connected with the settlement, and revenue from outside sources. Once a week I go down there and check up on the increase in the subscription lists, and transfer the surpluses from the collecting centres in scores of cities to the central funds. After that, No one except the Babu and myself knows what happens to the money. But, having taken on this job as their foreign exchange expert has enabled me to secure particulars of all their own agents and collecting centres. So, when it comes to a show-down, we’ll be in a position, by fair means or foul, to close in on the lot.’
De Richleau smiled. ‘You’ve done a fine job, Rex.’
Rex grinned back. ‘Not too bad, though it’s been a tough assignment living with this hellish crew and pretending to go along with them. I’d have liked a few weeks longer before I blew the gaff. But you boys arriving on the scene with the best intentions have put paid to that; and I’ve got enough dope now to kill this Black Power movement in its cradle.’
Simon swallowed the last chunk of pineapple from his plate and asked, ‘How d’you plan to do that?’
‘No problem there,’ Rex smiled. ‘Way back home I know plenty of folks who’re near the President. I’ll get a private interview and lay out the deck. The old man’s no fool. He’ll jump to it that this is real dynamite. The settlement on the Sala de Uyuni and the Inca fortress being so remote from the outside world cuts two ways. It enabled the Satanists to keep their operations secret, but C.I.A. or Marines could be flown in with equal secrecy. The Bolivian Government would never hear a word of it. I’ll take it on myself to see to it that the fortress and everyone in it are blown to hell. All the papers at the settlement would be seized, and that would enable us to deal with the stooges there. They’d be given a choice. Either to face a charge of conspiracy and inciting to riot, which would land them in the cooler for a term of years, or to sign a confession and receive a thousand dollars each, to tide them over until they could start a new life. Three hundred thousand dollars, or say half a million for the whole job, is only peanuts to Uncle Sam; and we’d have put paid to the most dangerous conspiracy the Devil has hatched since he made use of Hitler to wreck ten million lives.’
Rex broke off to light a cigarette, then asked, ‘Now tell me your end of the story. The Prince put me wise to it that you boys had started a hunt for me, and mighty good of you it was. But he told me only the bare facts, then that you’d been caught and were being flown up here. I want to hear the details.’
Between them, Richard and Simon gave an account of their doings in Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas and Santiago, of the barbecue, Nella’s murder, their imprisonment and Simon’s engagement to Miranda. When Rex heard this last piece of news, he slapped his thigh and cried:
‘Oh boy! Isn’t that just great I’m crazy with delight. That poor kid has had one hell of a life. And she’s a real sweetie. Just think, too, of old Simon being hooked at last. But you won’t regret it, Simon. Blind or not, Miranda’s a girl in a million. Come now. We must have a drink on this.’ And, taking a bottle of Three Star Brandy from the hamper, he filled four of the paper cups to the brim.
It was very cold there, although not with the cold of evil; and the neat brandy was welcome as a means of warming them up. As they sipped it, the Duke took over, recounted how he fooled the police by forging the statement by Nella that had got his friends off, then how they had flown up to the Sala and been captured by von Thumm.
‘That Nazi swine!’ Rex exclaimed. ‘What wouldn’t I give to get my hands round his throat. When I’d agreed to join Don Salvador’s outfit, he turned me over to the Baron for instruction. We were supposed to be running a poker school on Saturday nights, but the thought of what we actually did makes me want to vomit. It was all I could do to take it; but it was that or throwing in my hand, so I just had to grin and pretend I was enjoying the fun.’
They had made their escape shortly after one o’clock. It had taken them half an hour to reach the ruined church, and they had been talking for over an hour; so it was now close on a quarter to three, and Rex said, ‘Guess we’d better get a few hours’ shut-eye, as I’d like to take off soon after dawn.’
‘Ner, not all of us,’ Simon shook his head. ‘Best take turns, so that one of us is always awake. At any time the Prince may find out that we got away. He can overlook us, so he’ll know where we are. He might start something, and we mustn’t be caught napping.’
‘You would be right, Simon, if we were in most places,’ said the Duke. ‘But not here. We are now under the protection of the Cross. So all of us can sleep without fear.’
They stood up and faced the altar, praying silently for continued protection, then lay down and huddled together for warmth. Soon they were all sound asleep.
Shortly after first light they were woken by a whistling and rising and falling keening sound. Inside the ruin it was perfectly still; but when they got up and went over to the broken-down doorway, they realised the reason for this eerie noise. Outside, it was blowing a hurricane.
‘Hell’s bells!’ exclaimed Rex. ‘He’s raised the wind against us.’
‘You are right,’ agreed de Richleau grimly. ‘This is no ordinary storm. The wind would be rushing through this ruin at a hundred miles an hour, but it’s as still as a mill-pond. Look at the way those trees are bent over almost double. There! One of them has been uprooted and is being carried away like a matchstick.’
Incautiously, Richard stepped out through the open doorway. A fierce gust caught him and would have swept him off his feet had not Rex grabbed his arm and yanked him back to safety.
Gloomily they stumbled back over the rubble to the clear space near the centre of the nave, where they had slept.
‘We’re stymied,’ said Simon bitterly. ‘Not a hope of our flying down to the coast while this lasts.’
‘He won’t be able to keep it up indefinitely,’ the Duke sought to comfort them. ‘With luck we may be able to get away this afternoon.’
Rex grunted. ‘I doubt it. The odds are that the aircraft will have been caught up and smashed to fragments.’
‘I don’t think so. It is half a mile away. And look at those two women.’ De Richleau pointed at two distant figures with bundles strapped to their backs, and wearing the bowler-like hats favoured by the Andean peasants. They were trudging along unaffected by the wind.
‘I’m certain that this is purely local. The wind is not blowing in one direction, but surging round and round the building. It is as though we were in the centre of a cyclone. Until it drops, we are as much prisoners as though we were in a big, circular cage; but there is at least one consolation.’ De Richleau turned and glanced at the hamper. ‘We have plenty of food and drink left to see us through the day.’
Unhappily, they set about opening two more tins and sat down to breakfast. They endeavoured to cheer themselves with the knowledge that, as long as they remained in the church under the protection of the Cross, they would be safe. But they could not remain there indefinitely.
During the morning they tried to forget their anxiety about the future by talking of the past: the desperate situations they had won their way out of, and the happy days of idleness and laughter they had spent together.
While they talked, the wind never ceased to howl and whine round the building. Neither did it stop as they ate a meagre lunch, nor during the long hours of the afternoon. When evening came, its force had not lessened, and it was clear that there was no longer any hope of their getting away that day.
At about eight o’clock, they ate what remained of the food they had brought from the aircraft and, an hour later, with the sound of the hurricane still at full blast, settled down to get what sleep they could.
In the early hours of the morning they had been captured, they had all been so tired out that, in spite of the fact that they were lying on cold, hard stone, they had dropped off almost at once. But now they twisted and turned for a long time, until, one by one, they fell into an uneasy sleep.
Rex was the first to wake. The pale light of dawn lit the ruin. Suddenly he was struck by the complete silence. The wind had stopped blowing. With a cry of excitement, he grasped the Duke by the shoulder and shook him. De Richleau opened his eyes and stared up at Rex for a moment, as though he did not see him, then he slowly sat up. Rex’s cry had roused the others. Like him, they realised that the hurricane had ceased, and were exclaiming joyfully that they were now free to fly down to the coast.
But the Duke showed no sign of sharing their relief and excitement. His eyes were fixed on Simon and his gaze was filled with sorrow. In a low voice, he said:
‘My dear son. I have bad news for you. How to break it to you I hardly know. But I have just returned from the Astral. What I am about to tell you is no figment of the imagination induced by sorcery, such as we saw down in that dungeon the night before last. When I was on the Astral I was confronted by the Prince. He said that we must return to him, or pay a forfeit. He is holding someone to ransom. Yesterday, while he kept us captive here, they kidnapped a young woman in Santiago, and flew her up to the fortress. She is now there, a prisoner at their mercy. Need I… need I name her?’
The blood had drained from Simon’s face. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were staring.
De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes; Miranda.’