At the sight of De Richleau’s breakdown Rex almost gave in too. The cold sweat of terror had broken out on his own forehead, yet he was still fighting down his fear and, after a moment, the collapse of that indomitable leader to whom he had looked so often, and with such certain faith in the worst emergencies, brought him a new feeling of responsibility. His generous nature was great enough to realise that the Duke’s courage had only proved less than his own on this occasion because of his greater understanding of the peril they were called upon to face. Now, it was as though the elder man had been wounded and put out of action, so Rex felt that it was up to him to take command.
‘We can’t let this thing be,’ he said with sudden firmness, stooping to place an arm round De Richleau’s shaking shoulders. ‘You stay here. I’m going down to face the music’
‘No–no, Rex.’ The Duke grabbed at his coat. ‘They’ll murder you without a second thought.’
‘Will they? We’ll see!’ Rex gave a grating laugh. ‘Well, if they do you’ll have something you can fix on them that the police will understand. It’ll be some consolation to think you’ll see to it that these devils swing for my murder if they do me in.’
‘Wait! I won’t let you go alone,’ the Duke stumbled to his feet. ‘Don’t you realise that death is the least thing I fear. One look from the eyes of the Goat could send you mad, then where is the case to put before the police? Half the people in our asylums may be suffering from a physical lesion of the brain but the others are unaccountably insane. The real reason is demoniac possession brought about by looking upon terrible things that they were never meant to see.’
‘I’ll risk it.’ Rex was desperate now. He held up the crucifix. ‘This is going to protect me, because I’ve got faith that it will.’
‘All right then, but even madness isn’t the worst that can happen to us. This life is nothing, I’m thinking of the next. Oh, God, if only dawn would come or we had some form of Light that we could bring to bear on these worshippers of Darkness.’
Rex took a pace forward. ‘If we’d known what we were going to be up against we’d have brought a searchlight on a truck. That would have given this bunch something to think about if light has the power you say. But it’s no good worrying about that now. We’ve got to hurry.’
‘No—wait!’ the Duke exclaimed with sudden excitement. ‘I’ve got it. This way—quick!’ He turned and set off up the hill at a swift crouching run.
Rex followed, and when they reached the brow easily overtook him. ‘What’s the idea,’ he cried, using his normal voice for the first time for hours.
‘The car!’ De Richleau panted, as he pelted over the rough grass to the place where they had left the Hispano. ‘To attack them is a ghastly risk in any case, but this will give us a sporting chance.’
Rex reached it first and flung open the door. The Duke tumbled in and got the engine going. It purred on a low note as they bumped forward in the darkness to the brow of the hill.
‘Out on the running-board, Rex,’ snapped De Richleau as he thrust out the clutch. He seemed, in those few moments, to have recovered all his old steel-like indomitable purpose. ‘It’s a madman’s chance because it’s ten to one we’ll get stuck going up the hill on the other side, but we must risk that. When I use the engine again, snap on the lights. As we go past, throw your crucifix straight at the thing on the throne. Then try and grab Simon by the neck.’
‘Fine!’ Rex laughed suddenly, all his tension gone now that he was at last going into action. ‘Go to it!’
The car slid forward, silently gathering momentum as it rushed down the steep slope. Next second they were almost upon the nearest of the Satanists. The Duke let in the clutch and Rex switched on the powerful headlights of the Hispano.
With the suddenness of a thunderclap, a shattering roar burst upon the silence of the valley as though some monster plane was diving full upon that loathsome company from the cloudy sky. At the same instant, the whole scene was lit in all its ghastliness by a blinding glare which swept towards them at terrifying speed. The great car bounded forward, the dazzling beams threw into sharp relief the naked forms gathered in the hollow, De Richleau jammed his foot down on the accelerator and, calling with all his will upon the higher powers for their protection, charged straight for the Goat of Mendes upon the Satanic throne.
At the first flash of those blinding lights which struck full upon them, the Satanists rushed screaming for cover. It was as though two giant eyes of some nightmare monster leapt at them from the surrounding darkness, and the effect was as that of a fire-hose turned suddenly upon an angry threatening mob.
Their maniacal exaltation died away. The false exhilaration of the alcohol, the pungent herbal incense and the drug-laden ointments which they had smeared upon their bodies, drained from them. They woke as from an intoxicated nightmare to the realisation of their nakedness and helplessness.
For a moment some of them thought that the end had come and that the Power of Darkness had cashed in their bond, claiming them for its own upon this last Walpurgis-Nacht. Others, less deeply imbued with the mysteries of the Evil cult, forgot the terrible entity whose powers they had come to beg in return for their homage and, reverting to their normal thoughts, saw themselves caught and ruined in some ghastly scandal, believing those blinding shafts of light from the great Hispano to herald the coming of the police.
As the grotesque nude figures scattered with shrieks of terror the car bounded from ridge to ridge heading straight for the monstrous Goat. When the lights fell upon it Rex feared for an instant that the malefic rays which streamed from its baleful eyes would overcome the headlights of the car. The lamps flickered and dimmed, but as the Duke clung to the wheel he was concentrating, with all the power of his mind, upon visualising the horshoe surmounted by a cross in silver light just above the centre of his forehead, setting the symbol in his aura and, at the same time, repeating the lines of the Ninety-first Psalm.
‘“Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the most High: shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say unto the Lord, Thou are my hope, and my stronghold: my God, in Him will I trust.
For He shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter: and from the noisome pestilence.”’
From the time Rex switched on the headlights, it was only a matter of seconds before the big car hurtled forward like a living thing right on to the ground where the Sabbat was being held.
Rex, clinging to the coachwork, and also visualising that symbol which De Richleau had impressed so strongly upon him, leaned from the step of the car and, with all his force, threw the ivory crucifix straight in the terrible face of the monstrous beast.
The Duke swerved the car to avoid the throne and Simon who, alone of all the Satanists, remained standing but apparently utterly unconscious of what was happening.
The blue flames of the black candles set upon the hellish altar went out as though quenched by some invisible hand. The lights of the car regained their full brilliance, and once again they heard the terrible screaming neigh which seemed to echo over the desolate Plain for miles around as the crucifix, shining white in the glow of the headlights, passed through the face of the Goat.
A horrible stench of burning flesh mingled with the choking odour from the sulphur candles and filled the air like some poisonous gas, but there was no time to think or analyse sensations. After that piercing screech, the brute upon the rocks disappeared. At the same instant Rex grabbed Simon by the neck, and hauled him bodily on to the step of the car as it charged the farther slope of the hollow.
Jolting and bouncing it breasted the rise, hesitating for the fraction of a second upon the brink as though some awful power was striving to draw it backwards. But the Duke threw the gear lever into low, and they lurched forward again on to level ground.
Rex, meanwhile, had flung open the door at the back and dragged Simon inside where he collapsed on the floor in a senseless heap. Instinctively, although De Richleau had warned him not to do so, he glanced out of the back window down into the valley where they had witnessed such terrible things, but it lay dark, silent, and seemingly deserted.
The car was travelling now at a better pace, although De Richleau did not dare to use the full power of his engine for fear that they should strike a sudden dip or turn over in some hidden gully.
For a mile they raced north-eastward while, without ceasing, the Duke muttered to himself those protective lines:
‘“He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers: his faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night: nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
For the pestilence that walketh in darkness: nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day.”’
Then, to his joy, they struck a track at right-angles and he turned along it to the north-westward, slipping into top gear. The car bounded forward and seemed to fly as though all the devils of Hell were unleashed behind it in pursuit. Swerving, jolting, and bounding across the grassy ruts, they covered five miles in twice as many minutes until they came upon the Lavington-Westbury road.
Even then De Richleau would not slow down but, turning in the direction of London, roared on, swerving from bend to bend with utter disregard for danger in his fear of the greater danger that lay behind.
They flashed through Earlstoke, Market Lavington and then Easterton, where, unseen by them, the Blue Rolls lay just off the road in a ditch where Tanith had crashed it a few hours before; then Bushall, Upavon, Ludgershall and so to Andover, having practically completed a circuit of the Plain. Here at last, at the entrance of the town, the Duke brought the car to a halt and turned in his seat to look at Rex.
‘How is he?’ he asked.
‘About all-in I reckon. He is as cold as blazes, and he hasn’t fluttered an eyelid since I hauled him into the car. My God! What a ghastly business.’
‘Grim, wasn’t it!’ De Richleau, for once, was looking more than his age. His grey face was lined and heavy pouches seemed to have developed beneath his piercing eyes. His shoulders were hunched as he leaned for a moment, apparently exhausted, over the wheel. Then he pulled himself together with a jerk and, thrusting his hand in his pocket, took out a flask which he passed to Rex.
‘Give him some of this—as much as you can get him to swallow. It may help to pull him round.’
Rex turned to where Simon lay hunched up beneath the car rugs on the back seat beside him and, forcing open his mouth, poured a good portion of the old brandy into it.
Simon choked suddenly, gasped, and jerked up his head. His eyes flickered open and he stared at Rex, but there was no recognition in them. Then his lids closed again and his head fell backwards on the seat.
‘Well, he’s alive, thank God.’ murmured Rex. ‘While you’ve been driving like a maniac I’ve been scared that we had lost poor Simon for good and all. But now we’d best get him back to London or to the nearest doctor just as soon as we can.’
‘I daren’t.’ De Richleau’s eyes were full of a desperate anxiety. ‘That devilish mob will have recovered themselves and are probably back at the house near Chilbury by now. They will be plotting something against us you may be certain.’
‘You mean that as Mocata knows your flat he will concentrate on it to get Simon back, just as he did before?’
‘Worse. I doubt if they’d ever let us reach it.’
Rex frowned impatiently. ‘How’re they going to stop us?’
‘They can control all the meaner things—bats, snakes, rats, foxes, owls—as well as cats and certain breeds of dog like the Wolfhound and Alsatian. If one of those dashed beneath the wheels of the car when we were going at any speed it might turn over. Besides, within certain limits they can control the elements, so they could ensure a dense local fog surrounding us the whole way, and every mile of it we’d be facing the risk of another car that hadn’t seen our lights smashing into us head on at full speed. If they combine the whole of their strength for ill it’s a certainty they’ll be able to bring about some terrible accident before we can cover the seventy miles to London. Remember too, this is still Walpurgis-Nacht and every force of evil that is abroad will be leagued against us. For every moment until dawn we three remain in the direst peril.’