Beddows had fallen flat on his face. His outflung right hand had knocked over one of the small vases that stood in each of the valleys of the pentacle; but his magical fortress had suffered no other damage and the big five-pointed star still glowed without a flicker.
C.B.’s mind was racing with visions of an inquest and all sorts of awkward questions which might have to be answered; yet within a moment he had jumped forward to give John a hand. Together they turned over the limp body and got it up into a sitting position.
In the full light of C.B.’s torch the unconscious man’s face looked an ugly sight. His head now lolled back over the edge of the tea-chest, his mouth hung slackly open—a dark cavern in his heavy blue jowl—and the whites of his turned-up eyes could be seen between half-closed lids. John got his victim’s pyjama jacket open and tore frantically at the buttons of the three vests beneath it. As he exposed a V of hairy chest, C.B. thrust his free hand into the opening, held it there a moment, then gave a sigh of relief.
‘His heart is quite strong, and it doesn’t look as if he had a stroke. I think he fainted from sheer terror. He’ll probably be quite all right when he comes round.’
‘Thank God!’ John murmured. ‘From what you said I thought I’d killed him.’
Ignoring the remark, C.B. swivelled round, set the fallen vase upright, and picking up another poured from it about half its contents into the one that had been knocked over.
‘What’s the point of doing that?’ John asked.
‘To repair the breach in this Astral defence work, of course.’
‘Do you really think that herbs and horseshoes and candles can protect people from evil spirits?’
‘Certainly I do; if they are arranged in accordance with the proper formula. There are natural laws which govern everything. These, although scorned and ignored by modern science, are just as potent in achieving their object as a radar screen, or the use of our latest inventions for dispersing fog.’
John glanced round a little nervously. ‘After the terror I felt in that crypt tonight, I’m no longer sceptical about there being all sorts of horrors lurking in such a place as this; so it’s a comfort to know you think this bag of tricks will provide an effective protection for us.’
‘I’m not quite so worried about ourselves, as about him,’ C.B. said, and he began to slap Beddows’ face in an attempt to bring him round. As his slaps had no effect, he lowered the body into a more comfortable position and went on, ‘I don’t think we’ve much to fear at the moment, but the danger to him will be acute as long as he remains unconscious.’
‘Why should that be, since he is in the pentacle with us?’
‘Because his spirit is temporarily out of his body. That will give his enemies the best possible chance to capture it. If they were quick off the mark when we broke the magic circle by entering it, and the vase was upset, they may have done so already. If not, I think there is a good chance of the restored pentacle protecting him. But I don’t know enough about these things to be certain. All I do know is that in his present state he is ten times more vulnerable than we are; so it’s obvious that if there are any evil forces in this room it is him they will attempt to destroy.’
‘What … what will happen if they succeed?’
‘When he comes round it won’t be him. The personality inside him will no longer be Henry Beddows. His body will have been taken possession of by a demon.’
‘Just as you say occurs with Christina every night?’
‘No. Far worse than that. She still makes sense. He will be permanently demented. Off his chump for good.’
‘You are really convinced that evil spirits can drive people mad?’
‘I haven’t the least doubt about it. Ignore the Bible if you will, and scoff at all the records of such happenings in mediaeval times as based upon ignorant superstition. That gets you nowhere, unless you can account in some other way for certain types of loss of mental control that have afflicted great numbers of people from the earliest times, and still continue to do so. Most cases of lunacy are obviously due to physical causes; but any doctor will tell you that he has met with forms of madness which cannot be explained by any theory so far accepted by science; and most of the honest ones will admit that the symptoms in such cases tally with those described by the priests of all nations who have studied these things, as indications that the victim is “possessed of a devil”.’
John nodded. ‘I suppose in these days we are far too apt to discount the Bible; and, if one believes at all, one can hardly refuse to accept the account of Christ and the Gadarene swine. Still, all that apart, it seems to me that we have good grounds for regarding this chap as a bit round the bend already. No one who wasn’t would choose for a costume in which to sit up all night three suits of underclothes and pyjamas, instead of day things and an overcoat—or anyway a good warm dressing gown.’
‘On the contrary, the clothes he is wearing show that he understands what he is up against.’ C.B. flashed his torch round the floor. ‘Look how thoroughly the whole place has been swept and garnished before the pentacle was laid out. That shows he was aware that elementals are helped to materialise by dirt and filth. Above all they are attracted by the impurities of the human body. When he decided to fortify himself in here he evidently took every possible precaution against bringing in with him anything that might aid the enemy. Soiled clothes of any kind, or cushions and rugs that had been in use, would do so; that is why he made do with such underclothes and bedding as he could take straight from the linen-cupboard.’
‘From the bristles on his chin it looks as if he has been sitting here for several days; but I suppose he must have left the pentacle now and again in the daytime.’
‘Why? Were you thinking about his natural functions?’
‘Yes. If you are right about human impurities, his own would form a dangerous focus Within the Pentacle, and he could not possibly have controlled himself long enough to grow that beard.’
‘An Indian fakir could; so could he if he is an expert practitioner of Yoga—particularly if he has eaten very little. Each time he left the pentacle he would have to remake it to restore its maximum potency, and seeing the state he was in it is most unlikely he would leave its protection even for a few minutes, unless it was absolutely unavoidable.’
‘He must practise Yoga then, otherwise …’
‘No. He got round that problem another way.’ C.B. was shining his torch down into the tea-chest. More than half of it was occupied by a large metal container, and he added, ‘Look, I’ll bet that thing is a form of Elsan specially fitted with an airtight lid.’
The only other things in the chest were two tins of dry biscuits and a dozen bottles, about half of which were still full of water. ‘I expect you’re right,’ John conceded. ‘Anyhow, you are about his not eating much.’
‘He wouldn’t dare to bring meat, game or fish into the pentacle, and after a day or two even fruit might start to go bad.’
‘He must have been mighty scared to shut himself up here and go on a prison diet.’
‘Yes, scared stiff,’ C.B. agreed, switching out his torch to economise its battery. ‘But what luck to have found him here. If only he is all right when he comes round, and we can get him to talk freely while he is so scared, we shall have solved the riddle of where Christina stands in all this.’
‘We know that already. That devilish Canon is after her to feed her blood to his filthy homunculi.’
‘I mean we’ll get to the bottom of the whole business: we’ll find out how she came under Copely-Syle’s influence in the first place, and what the tie-up is between him and her father. I thought it might be blackmail, but there’s more to it than that. Finding him in this pentacle shows that he, too, is an occultist of no mean order. I want to know if he is another Black who has quarrelled with the Canon, or a White who has found the odds too much for him; and if either or both of them are associated with other practitioners of the Black Art. We know that the day after tomorrow is the peak point of Christina’s danger; and we have every hope now of keeping her out of their clutches till it is past; but we’ve got to think of her future too. Having been mixed up with these people, she is highly liable to get drawn in as a witch unless we can take steps to prevent it. Only by getting at the full truth can we hope to free her from their evil influence once and for all.’
John nodded. ‘Of course, we’ve got to do that somehow, or the way in which they are able to dominate her mind at night will continue to make her vulnerable at any time. But what is likely to happen if, when Beddows comes to, we find that he is possessed?’
‘Then we are in for something extremely unpleasant,’ C.B. replied grimly. ‘He will probably act like a raving maniac and attempt to kill us.’
‘In that case we’ll have no alternative but to knock him on the head.’
‘If he becomes violent, yes. But he may resort to cunning, and by some plausible story attempt to lead us into danger.’
‘What is the drill, then?’
‘We’ll give him his head for a bit. Fortunately the sort of elementals that get possession of humans are said to be of very low intelligence. They usually give themselves away; so we should be able to tell whether it is really Beddows who is talking to us or some horror that has got into him and is making use of his tongue. Anyhow, if we have any doubts there is one acid test we can apply.’
‘What is that?’
‘The little vases have Holy water in them. They would be pointless otherwise. I shall take a few drops from one and sprinkle it on him. Demons can’t stand Holy water. If he is possessed, he will scream as though he had been scalded.’
Beddows still showed no sign of coming round, so they settled themselves beside him to await events. The glow from the blue ribbon that formed the star was sufficient to make large print readable inside the pentacle, or a few feet from it; but farther off the gloom thickened into almost complete darkness. Even now that they had been there for some minutes without the torch, so that their eyes had had a chance to become accustomed to the faint blue light, they could barely make out by it the dark beams and uprights in the white walls, while above them the great rafters were only vaguely discernible as strips of denser blackness in the black vault overhead.
As soon as they stopped talking they again became conscious of the uncanny silence that gripped the old house. Out on the landing the ape had ceased its scuffling attempts to free itself. C.B. was troubled for a moment by the thought that they might have suffocated the poor brute; but, tightly as its arms were pinioned, he felt sure that enough air would get up between the folds of the eiderdown for it to breathe. The odds were that its struggles had tired it out and it had dropped into a doze.
John tried to keep his thoughts on Christina, but they would slide away from her to the fact that the motionless body at his side was that of her father, and to the fantastic situation in which they had found him. It seemed unbelievable that a twentieth-century industrialist should be mixed up with witchcraft and have shut himself up for days on biscuits and water in a pentacle as the only safe refuge from evil spirits. Yet that he had done so was beyond dispute.
From that it was only a step to imagining the sort of things he had feared to see while sitting there day after day and night after night. John closed his eyes, hoping to shut out from his mind the winged and crawling monstrosities that his memory of Breughel’s paintings conjured up so vividly. The darkness of closed eyelids proved less conducive to such gruesome imagery than the pale light that hardly reached the walls. Nevertheless, he found that he could not keep his eyes closed for more than a few moments at a time. The urge to open them, to make quite certain that nothing was stirring in the shadows, proved irresistible. Each time he did so his glance wavered swiftly back and forth, probing anew the darkest corners of the room, seeking reassurance that no unclean denizen from the grim world of Eternal Night was forming in any of them.
There came a moment when he could have sworn that at the far end of the room from the door, where it was darkest, a humped thing like a big turtle had taken shape, and that the curve of its back was slowly undulating as it pulsed with malevolent life. Loath as he was to risk making a fool of himself by giving a false alarm, he had just made up his mind to attract C.B.’s attention to it when Beddows gave a loud groan.
It was an eerie sound in the tense stillness that held the lofty room. John, staring into the darkness, had his back turned. His whole body jerked at the unexpectedness of it, and he swivelled round as swiftly as if a glass of cold water had been poured down his spine. C.B. switched on his torch. As he brought it round to level it on Beddows’ face, the beam cut the darkness at the far end of the room with a swathe of light. Swift as its passage was, John was in time to glance over his shoulder while it swept the floor. With a gasp of relief he realised that either he must have imagined the humped thing, or the powerful light had caused it instantly to disintegrate.
As the beam came round on Beddows they saw that his eyes were open and that he was licking his dry lips. He groaned again, made a feeble gesture as though trying to push the light away from his face, then struggled into a sitting position. John helped him up and C.B. lowered the torch a little. Neither showed the acute anxiety they felt, but the thought uppermost in the minds of both was how much hung on the next few moments. If Beddows was himself and sane, their journey to England should prove a hundred times worth while, as he must know the truth about the strange relationship between his daughter and the Canon; and, with his help, the tie could be broken for good. On the other hand, he might be possessed and, instead of helpful, highly dangerous.
His opening move on regaining consciousness was by no means reassuring. Thrusting them aside, he got to his knees and cried in a harsh voice: ‘Who are you? How the hell d’you get here?’
‘My name is Verney,’ replied C.B. quietly, ‘and that of my friend is John Fountain. We mean you no harm: on the contrary—’
‘Why should I believe that?’ shouted Beddows.
‘Anyhow, you’ll admit now that we are real?’ John cut in.
Beddows turned, glared at him and muttered, ‘I wonder! I wonder!’
‘Oh come!’ John put a hand on his shoulder; but he shook it off and staggered to his feet with the evident intention of jumping out of the pentacle.
C.B. caught him round the knees in a rugby tackle. Next moment he was sprawling full length on the blankets. As he attempted to rise John joined in, and between them they held him down flat on his back.
He was a powerful man and he struggled violently, but in spite of that they managed to keep him down. The very fact that they were able to do so inclined C.B. to suppose that he was not possessed, but simply a very frightened and angry man. So when Beddows stopped cursing from lack of breath, he said: ‘Now listen! You have got yourself into an unholy mess, and we are here to help you out of it.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ Beddows panted. ‘I don’t believe it! How did you get up here? Jutson or his wife must have let you in, and told you about the trap and the ape. In spite of all their promises they’ve sold me out to Copely-Syle.’
‘Oh no they haven’t. We broke in.’
Beddows gave a sudden snarl. ‘If that’s true I’ll have the law on you.’
‘No you won’t. Not unless you are prepared to have a full description of how we found you tonight come out in court. How would your shareholders react to that, eh? Can’t you imagine the headlines in the papers: “Chairman of Directors found sealed in magic pentacle. Satanic rituals practised in Essex manor house”, and so on?’
‘Damn you!’ Beddows gave a mighty heave, and nearly succeeded in breaking away.
‘Steady!’ C.B. shifted his grip and pressed down with his full weight on him again. ‘Don’t be a fool, Beddows. Just now you tried to hurl yourself out of the pentacle. That wouldn’t be a very clever thing to do, would it? As long as you are inside it you are safe, but once you leave it all sorts of unpleasant things might succeed in getting hold of you.’
Beddows relaxed. For a moment he lay silent, then he let out something between a sigh and a moan and said, ‘What the hell do you want of me?’
Sensing that his resistance was lessening, C.B. said firmly, ‘We want the truth about your association with Canon Copely-Syle.’
‘That has nothing to do with you.’
‘Yes it has. Fountain and I came all the way from the South of France specially to talk to you about it.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘It is our business. It is the business of every decent person to lend a hand in scotching the sort of devilry that Copely-Syle is engaged in. And you’ve got to help us.’
‘No! No! I won’t talk about him! I daren’t! The danger I am in from him is bad enough as it is.’
C.B. loosened his hold a little and took a more persuasive tone. ‘Come! Pull yourself together, man. You’re not the only one in danger. How about your daughter Ellen?’
‘Ellen!’ Beddows repeated miserably. ‘I … I thought I had managed to keep her out of this.’
‘Far from it. She has been in very grave danger indeed, and is a long way from being safely out of the wood yet.’
Now that Beddows was no longer actually being held down, he struggled up into a sitting position and demanded, ‘What has been happening to her?’
‘The Canon is after her blood. I mean that literally, and I’ll bet any money you know what he would do with her blood if he got it. That’s why we came back to England to hunt you out. You’ve got to tell us everything you know about the Canon.’
‘No! I’m not talking!’
‘Damn it, man!’ John cried. ‘Think of your daughter! How can you possibly refuse to help us free her from the influence that devil exerts over her?’
‘No!’ Beddows repeated doggedly. ‘I did my best for her. I can’t do more. She must take her chance now. I’m not talking. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Yes, you are going to talk,’ said C.B. quietly. ‘Do you know what I mean to do if you persist in your refusal?’
‘What?’ faltered Beddows uneasily. ‘What will you do?’
‘I shall smash this pentacle to pieces; then Fountain and I will leave you here alone.’
‘No! No! You can’t do that.’
‘I can and I will. Either you are going to answer any questions or I’ll make hay of your Astral defences.’
For a moment Beddows sat there panting heavily, then he muttered, ‘All right. What do you want to know?’
‘How long have you known Copely-Syle?’
‘Where did you first meet him?’
‘Here.’
C.B. raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you bought this place only in 1949?’
‘That’s so.’ Beddows now seemed to have resigned himself to talking freely, and went on in a normal voice, ‘I’d been wanting to for a long time, but the stiff-necked old bitch who owned the place wouldn’t sell. Even after the war had reduced her to scraping in order to stay on here she still refused my offers; so I had to wait till she died. Her name was Durnsford—the Honourable Mrs Bertram Durnsford—and I was her chauffeur from 1927 to 1931.’
‘I see; so it was while you were employed here as chauffeur that you first met the Canon?’
‘That’s right. When I said I had known him for twenty years, it’s really nearer twenty-five; but to begin with it was only as a servant knows his mistress’s visitors. He was a great chum of the old girl’s, and from the time I took the place he was often here.’
‘Was she a witch?’
‘Yes. There’s a lot of it still goes on in Essex. Parts of it are so isolated that modern influences are slower to penetrate than in most other places. She had been mistress here so long that she always thought of herself as one of the gentry; but she wasn’t. She started life as daughter of the village witch and, so they say, put a spell on the young squire here to marry her. It’s said, too, that as soon as she got tired of him she used a wax image to cause him to sicken and die. After that she acted the high-mightiness and ruled the village with a rod of iron. She was over eighty when she died and more or less bedridden for the last few years; so she had lost much of her occult power, and with it most of her money; but she still had enough power by such means to keep me from getting her out after she had refused my offers to buy.’
‘Why were you so keen to own The Grange?’ John asked.
‘Sentiment,’ came the unexpected reply. ‘I came here as a young man of twenty-three. I—er—formed an attachment soon after I took the job, and one of the few really decent things I have got out of life are the memories of it. I wanted the place on that account. I suppose, too, the idea of owning the big house in which I had once been a servant appealed to my vanity. But it was wanting to live where she had lived that made me determined to have it.’
‘Let’s get back to Copely-Syle,’ said C.B. ‘How did it happen that you got to know him more intimately than as one of your mistress’s visitors?’
Beddows gave a heavy sigh, then shrugged resignedly. ‘Well, since you insist, I suppose I had better give you the whole story from the beginning.’