The beautiful dumb girl was sitting there without a trace of expression on her face. If she had heard the Doctor’s words she showed no sign of it whatever, and it suddenly came to Simon that apart from eating the food which had been set before her at supper she had not made a single self-initiated action since she had entered the Doctor’s house.
Even as he struggled against the bewildering horror of the situation his swift brain was working again. If, as the Mulatto had said, she was indeed a Zombie whose brain he had power to animate and direct even at a distance, he could presumably also empty it and leave it blank at will. Every idea that Phillippa had expressed by writing on her tablet since they had first met her on Waterloo station, nearly a week before, had, therefore, been pure persiflage—just a meaningless froth of written words—not in anyway expressing the personality that she had been in her true self two years or more ago, but conventional phrases having just enough individuality to convey to her unwitting companions the sort of person whom the Doctor wished them to believe her to be.
They had it only from her that she had been struck dumb by a bomb which had fell on a hospital in which she was nursing, and evidently that was quite untrue; yet it was just the sort of story that their clever enemy would have caused the girl to tell, knowing it to be a certain winner in gaining their sympathy for her. That other business, too, about her having lived in Jamaica and having had an uncle who had taken her all over the West Indies, was also a fabrication of the Doctor’s, put out through her solely to enable her to remain in their company so that she could continue to act as a focus for him to keep an easy watch upon them.
Kaleidoscopic pictures of himself and the girl together during the last few days flickered wildly before Simon’s mental eyes. He had held her hand and danced with her, and had it not been for his terrible anxiety about his friends on the previous night, so that his mind was capable of thinking of nothing else during those frightful hours when he did not know if they were dead or alive, he would certainly have made love to her; yet she was a dead thing—a body without a soul—something that had come back out of the grave.
As he stared at her smooth, faintly dusky cheeks and rich red lips, that seemed impossible; and yet, now that he knew, he had a great feeling of revulsion. There was something rather repellent in her apparent full-blooded healthiness, and he felt that even to touch her would now fill him with nausea. At the same time he was conscious of an overwhelming pity for her—or rather, for the person that she had been before she had been robbed of her soul.
The lovely thing at which he was staring was only a lump of ‘human’ clay, animated entirely by a tiny portion of another extraordinary powerful will. Somewhere the girl’s spirit must be imprisoned, suffering all the tortures of one that was neither in incarnation nor out of it, that could neither enjoy that tranquil period after the completion of a life on Earth nor go forth as a free spirit to animate another human body; but must watch in an agony of misery the uses to which the body that she could no longer control should be put, until some fatal accident or disease of the flesh rendered that body no longer tenable for the alien entity which had taken possession of it.
Another thought struck Simon. As long as he had imagined that he had the dumb girl’s companionship he had not been afraid of the Doctor, although he was perfectly well aware that she could have done little to protect him—just as a man walking through a jungle at night might be comforted by the presence of his dog, although that dog could not guard him from the bite of a snake or a panther’s spring. The others were sleeping, and so deeply that he doubted if his loudest shout would wake them. Philippa was not even a friendly animal, but a puppet in human form animated by the will of his enemy, and he was utterly alone with the malignant Satanist.
All those thoughts had rushed through his brain like lightning. At the last of them he had felt a sudden impulse to spring from his chair and dash in terror from the house, but resisted it; and, by the law that all resistance to Evil brings added strength, a new thought leapt into his mind. ‘You fool! Your case is no worse now than it has been the whole evening. You had made a plan, and Philippa had no part to play in it. Therefore this frightful disclosure of the Doctor’s makes no difference. He told you about Philippa only to terrify you. Don’t let him succeed. Carry on as you meant to; as though he had not mentioned it, but had just announced—as you expected him to do sooner or later— that he was going to bed.’
Simon’s plan was a very simple one and he had hatched it hours before. He was quite capable of following and taking part in a discussion while at the same time thinking of someone completely different, and during the whole session the Doctor had done nine-tenths of the talking, so Simon had had ample opportunity to consider the situation from every angle.
He was now absolutely convinced that when the Doctor went to sleep he did not mean to bother about the enemies that he had lured into his house; he would go out to lie in wait for Rex and Richard. If he could prevent their return he would be able to deal with the others at his leisure and during the coming day would derive a sadistic delight from watching them show signs of ever-increasing fatigue until they finally succumbed. Simon had decided that the best service he could possibly render, and indeed, as far as he could see, the only one which offered any hope of saving them all, was to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. At whatever risk to himself, he must endeavour to sabotage the Doctor’s plan so that Richard and Rex could escape his attack and manage to rejoin them.
According to what de Richleau had said, since their two friends had failed to return before sundown, and there were no night-landing facilities at Port-au-Prince, there was now no hope of their arriving until dawn. Evidently the Doctor had taken that into his calculations—hence his willingness to stay up talking until the small hours. He knew that the other would not take off from Kingston airport until two hours before sunrise; so, providing he was asleep by five or even six o’clock he would still have ample time in which to attack them during the latter half of their journey. Simon had set himself the task of keeping the Doctor awake until well after sun-up and he had spent a considerable portion of the last few hours in thinking of methods which might best enable him to do so.
Had his gun not gone down with the plane he would have been extremely tempted to whip it out and shoot the Doctor where he stood, taking a chance that, de Richleau and Marie Lou being asleep, their astrals were in the immediate neighbourhood. They could then have seized upon the Evil spirit at the moment of blackout immediately following death and have imprisoned it, thus accomplishing in one daring stroke the victory that they had set out to gain. But if the astrals of his friends were not in the vicinity the Doctor’s spirit would escape and, since they had no protection, would have them at his mercy. So the risk was great. But in any case he had no gun or other means of meting out swift death to the Satanist, so he was not called upon to gamble with the fate of them all.
The obvious course was to endeavour to wound the Doctor or to hurt him so much that he would be unable to sleep on account of the pain; but that was easier said than done. The Mulatto had the appearance of a man of about sixty but he was powerfully built, and Simon, who was very frail, felt certain that he would get the worst of any physical encounter. Only a surprise attack could inflict the requisite type of injury, and such an attack is not easy when one’s opponent is fully aware of one’s animosity, quick-witted and prepared for any eventuality.
Nevertheless Simon was a redoubtable opponent when he set his shrewd brain to work and he had taken considerable care to review every portion of the human body in relation both to the pain it can give when harmed and to its accessibility for swift attack.
In those desperate minutes after the Doctor’s revelation about Philippa, Simon had kept his eyes cast down so that his enemy should not be able to read his thoughts. Suddenly he lifted his right foot knee-high and, with all the force he was capable brought the point of his heel crashing down upon the Satanist’s left instep.
The Mulatto staggered back, his face contorted with agony. The sharp heel-edge had dug right down into the delicate tendons of his instep, just above his shoe-lace, and as Simon ground the hard edge home one of the small fragile bones which make up the arch of the foot snapped under the stab.
As the Doctor dragged free his foot he panted slightly and his eyes seemed to start out of his yellow face with the intensity of their malevolence. He made no move to strike at Simon, but lifting his injured foot he whispered: ‘By Baron Cimeterre, I swear you shall pay for that.’
But Simon had only started. The infliction of the wound was less than half his plan. Seizing the large oil-lamp from the table, he picked it up and hurled it at the Doctor’s head.
By ducking the Doctor escaped the dangerous missile but under the suddenness and violence of the attack he gave back and turned to stagger from the room. The lamp crashed in a far corner and the oil ran out in a sheet of flame which greedily leapt up the flimsy curtains. Next moment Simon had jumped upon a chair. There was another oil-lamp, swinging from a beam in the centre of the room. Wrenching this away from its sockets—holder and all—he hurled that, too, after his retreating enemy.
The second lamp also missed the Doctor, but as it burst, another great pool of flaming oil ran across the wooden floor, devouring the rush mats as it went. In a few moments the house would be on fire, just as Simon had deliberately planned that it should be.
‘Now, damn you, sleep if you can!’ Simon screamed, and, leaping from the chair, he rushed out of the room to rouse de Richleau and Marie Lou.
They were sleeping as they had fallen, fully dressed, upon their beds, and at first Simon thought that he would never be able to wake them. He shouted at Marie Lou and pulled her up into a sitting position, but she only flopped back again with a little groan. Desperate measures were necessary and he had to smack her face hard before any semblance of consciousness returned to her. The Duke proved equally difficult to rouse, and five precious minutes had fled before Simon had them both on their feet and they had taken in his garbled account of what had happened.
Still half-asleep, the other two stumbled after him as he raced back to the living-room. During the whole of his brief, violent attack on the Doctor, Philippa had not moved a muscle; she had just remained sitting in her chair, staring blankly in front of her. The fire had taken a rapid hold upon the wooden buildings and as they entered the sitting-room they saw that it was now half-obscured by flames and smoke. Philippa’s chair was empty, but suddenly she emerged from the centre of the smoke-screen. Evidently she had tried to follow the Doctor to his room but had been unable to do so.
As she lurched towards them they momentarily recoiled in horror. Her great eyes were staring, her mouth was wide open in a strangled scream, but no sound came from it. Her hair and her clothes were on fire and she seemed distraught with agony.
In a second, de Richleau had off his coat and flung it round her, while Marie Lou and Simon strove to beat out the flames from her burning skirt with their bare hands. Somehow they succeeded, just before she fainted and slid down among them to the floor.
The greater part of the room was now a glowing furnace and the only door as yet unattacked by the crackling flames was that leading to the guests’ bedrooms. The Duke and Simon grabbed Philippa up and, pulling her through it, carried her out by way of the nearest room on to the verandah.
Further along it they could see the fire had already spread to the dining-room and that unless it was swiftly checked it would soon be devouring the Doctor’s bedroom and study. They could hear him, somewhere on the other side of the pall of smoke and flying sparks, shouting to his house-boys, and the sound of heavy running feet. For one brief moment Simon allowed himself to savour his triumph as he exclaimed viciously:
‘Not much chance of that swine getting to sleep tonight now.’ Then he turned his attention back to the poor, soulless body that they knew as Philippa.
De Richleau was already examining her and he said despondently: ‘The poor girl’s got terrible burns on her head, arms and legs. We must get her down to the hospital as quickly as we possibly can.’
‘She—she’s not a girl at all—she’s a Zombie,’ Simon jerked out. ‘Doctor Saturday told me—said so himself just before I went for him.’
‘What’s a Zombie?’ asked Marie Lou in a puzzled voice.
De Richleau answered grimly. ‘Zombies are bodies without souls—dead people who have been called back from the grave to serve the Witch Doctor who has captured their souls. How utterly frightful!’
In a few swift sentences Simon told them what the Doctor had said of Philippa’s history.
The Duke nodded. ‘I should think, then, all the house-boys are Zombies too. But although Zombies can’t talk they can feel, so this wretched body that we call Philippa is suffering every bit as much as if the girl’s spirit were in it. We must get her to the hospital just the same. Heave her up, Simon, over my shoulders. It’s only about quarter of an hour’s walk down to the edge of the town and with any luck we’ll meet help on the way.’
They bundled Philippa’s body across the Duke’s back in a fireman’s lift and bowed under her weight he staggered down the verandah steps with Marie Lou leading the way and Simon behind to protect the small party’s rear. To carry the body was a considerable effort for the Duke, and every hundred yards or so he had to rest for a moment, but when they had covered half a mile they met an early market-cart which was coming down a forked road towards the town.
Although they could not speak Creole the great fat mammy who was driving grasped the situation and helped to arrange the unconscious form upon her bunches of vegetables. Whipping her miserable donkey into an ambling trot, she drove straight to the hospital, while the others ran and walked beside the little cart.
At the hospital they were relieved of her charge by a Mulatto nurse, who was called a Negro house-surgeon. After what they had heard of Haiti it was a pleasant surprise to find that the hospital at least would have rivalled any European institution in a similar-sized town for its cleanliness, its equipment and the evident efficiency of its staff, all of whom spoke passably good French. Philippa’s charred garments were cut off her and under a light covering she was swiftly wheeled away on a trolley for her burns to be treated. The others, meanwhile, were asked to sit down and wait for the surgeon’s report in a bare but not uncomfortable room.
While they waited they discussed the happenings of the night and de Richleau gave unstinted praise to Simon for his well-planned, courageous and skilfully-delivered attack on the enemy.
The Duke said that normally any Black as powerful as the Doctor would be able to overcome his own pain and throw himself into a self-induced trance, but that having set fire to his house would almost certainly prevent him from doing that. He would naturally be extremely anxious to save the valuable magical impedimenta, which he doubtless kept somewhere in his study, and other possessions, so the chances were that it would be at least a couple of hours before he had salvaged what he could and found a room in some neighbour’s house in which to sleep.
Simon had started the fire at about twenty minutes past three. It was now just on four. Another two hours would bring them to six, and it would take the Satanist at least a further hour to subdue the acute pain in his foot before he could get to sleep; so there was very little likelihood of his being able to leave his body before seven and the probability was that he would not succeed in getting out of it until considerably later. Owing, therefore, to the skilfulness of Simon’s stategy there was good reason to hope that he would have no time in which to work upon the astral before dawn, and they all felt confident that Rex and Richard would set out from Kingston at the earliest possible moment which would enable them to make a daylight landing at Port-au-Prince.
Half an hour later the Negro surgeon came down to tell them that Philippa’s burns were extremely severe and that he would not be able to answer for her life, but that it was difficult to tell yet if she would survive her injuries. He was a kind and friendly man and, seeing their depressed state, insisted on one of the nurses bringing them some hot coffee laced with rum to put them into better heart. When they had drunk it, he suggested that they should come back in the course of a few hours, by which time he hoped to have further news for them.
It was half-past five when they went out into the street and they saw that the sky was already paling to a faint grey over the mountains to the east. Having walked out of the town and a little way back along the road up to the Doctor’s house, they turned a corner, fringed by a great growth of dense vegetation, and suddenly had a full view of it. Any efforts to check the fire had clearly failed. The centre of the house had collapsed, dense smoke was billowing from the building, and its two ends were now a mass of flame, so there was no doubt at all that it must be totally consumed within another hour.
Comforted a little at having inflicted such a grievous blow upon the enemy, they turned back and slowly covered the two miles down to the harbour. Soon after they reached it dawn broke and the sky beyond the hills became a fantastic, fiery sea of vivid reds and golds.
The port was now waking to the coming day. Fishing-boats with worn and patched sails were putting out, the café-keepers were taking down the gimcrack shutters of the bars along the water-front, and a gang of Negroes were chanting melodiously in the distance as they heaved upon the hawsers of a tramp steamer that was just about to put to sea.
De Richleau and his friends stood scanning the sky towards the west, hoping that at any moment now they might discern the speck which would transpire to be Richard and Rex in a hired plane returning to them. For over an hour they waited there, staring out across the blue bay and the coast to either side of the harbour with its fringes of ragged palm trees, many of which had been truncated by a hurricane; but although the sun was up and full daylight flooded the scene, no longed-for speck appeared to gladden their eyes and fill their hearts with new hope.
Owing to Simon’s stratagems Marie Lou and the Duke had managed to get in over five hours’ sound sleep, so in spite of the night’s excitements they were feeling fairly refreshed, but it was now more than twenty-four hours since Simon himself had slept and he in turn was beginning to feel very worn and heavy-eyed.
Partly to rouse him up, at half-past seven de Richleau sent him with Marie Lou back to the hospital to inquire for Philippa, remaining on watch himself. By eight o’clock they rejoined him with the news that the surgeon had said that her injuries were too severe for her to recover and that he thought she would die during the course of the morning.
‘That may not sound good news on the face of it,’ grunted the Duke, ‘but it is so, all the same. We ourselves must see to it, though, that this time the poor thing is really dead and that her body can never again be reanimated.’
‘Could it be?’ Marie Lou asked.
‘Certainly. She hasn’t an injury in any vital part, and although her burns may have marred her beauty her physical form is still young and strong. That fiend we’re up against might quite well take her from the grave once more, this time to work as a slave in the plantations, unless we take proper steps to prevent him.’
‘How will you do that?’ inquired Simon.
De Richleau shrugged. ‘There are ways. But it is not a pleasant subject. The main point is that directly the semblance of life departs we must claim her body for burial. In the meantime let’s try and think of more pleasant things. Breakfast might help.’
None of them had thought of food during these trying hours, but they now realised that they were all distinctly hungry, so they went to the least grimy-looking of the small restaurants on the water-front and did ample justice to some excellent coffee and a very passable omelette.
It was nearly nine o’clock by the time they had finished and they were now becoming acutely anxious as to what had happened to Richard and Rex. Even if they had waited until dawn to take off in a plane from the Kingston airport, having been unable to do so before, they should certainly have arrived in Port-au-Prince by now, as even in an out-of-date machine the journey could easily be accomplished in two hours.
Without any particular interest they all saw a long, low, sea-going launch enter the harbour just as they were finishing their omelette but none of them remarked upon it until Simon spotted that at its stern it was flying the Red Ensign.
No sooner had he pointed it out to the others than two figures came from the launch’s cabin and jumped on to the harbour steps, where it was just being tied up. It was their friends. Hastily telling the Negro waiter that they would be back, their faces glowing with delight, they ran across the road to meet them.
Rex was carrying a large suit-case and he waved his free hand in greeting. ‘We’ve got the goods! But Holy Snakes it’s good to see you! We’ve been at our wits’ end for hours past thinking we’d be too late.’
‘Yes,’ beamed Richard, hugging Marie Lou. ‘Thank God you’re still all right. We reached Kingston at one o’clock yesterday, but all the tea in China wouldn’t have got us a plane. There just wasn’t one to be had. Luckily we spotted this boat. She’s much speedier than the one we went in, so we hired her, and after we’d bought the other things we set off back at once. We made the return trip in just over fifteen hours.’
‘Well done!’ de Richleau smiled. ‘Well done! Marie Lou and I would have been for it last night if Simon hadn’t played a magnificent lone hand; but he got us a breather and put an ugly spoke in the enemy’s wheel into the bargain.’
‘You’ve managed to identify the enemy, then?’ said Richard.
‘Good God, yes!’ exclaimed the Duke. ‘But of course, you don’t know—it’s that plausible Mulatto, Doctor Saturday. I expect you’re both famished, though? Come and sit down and we’ll tell you all about it.’
More coffee and eggs were ordered and while the new arrivals ate they were informed what had happened in their absence. All five of them then began to discuss their future plans.
‘You had better retain that sea-going launch for the time being, Richard,’ suggested the Duke, ‘and we’ll make her our temporary headquarters.’
‘You couldn’t possibly get a pentacle twenty-one feet in diameter on her, for our protection tonight.’ Richard objected; ‘her beam can hardly be as much as that.’
‘We could make several smaller ones,’ suggested Marie Lou, but the Duke intervened.
‘Now we’re together again a large one to contain us all would be much more effective, and I doubt if we could get a room of sufficient size in the hotel. There would also be all sorts of other objections to going there. We could, of course, hire an empty house, but that means interviewing agents and going out to see places which may not be suitable; so for the time being it will save us a lot of trouble if we use the launch. When night comes we can run it up on some quiet beach and make our pentacle there on the sand above the tide-line. In the meantime I may have another use for it, and it has the added advantage that its crew are Jamaica boys—not Haitians—so they’re much less likely to be got at by the Doctor.’
Having paid their reckoning they went to the launch and deposited in it the suitcase which Rex had been carrying. Then the Duke said that they had better go up to the hospital again and wait there until the life which animated Philippa’s burnt body left it.
Simon remarked that although he was in no danger of falling asleep he would much prefer to rest a little rather than walk any further, as it was now getting hot, and de Richleau agreed that it was a good idea that someone should stay in the launch to keep an eye on the treasured suitcase; so they left him there and set off through the town once more.
The hospital was only about ten minutes’ walk from the harbour, and when they reached it a young medical student told them that Philippa had passed away just before their arrival.
De Richleau said that in that case they would take charge of their friend’s body right away if arrangements could be made for some conveyance to remove it. He added the glib lie that as the girl’s parents lived in Jamaica they would naturally wish her to be buried there, and speed was important otherwise the body would begin to decompose in the heat before it could be shipped across.
The young internee was both sympathetic and affable and went off to find the surgeon, who, he said, would make out the death certificate and arrange for the ambulance to take the body down to the harbour.
They then waited for nearly twenty minutes, and when at last the surgeon appeared his face was very grave.
‘I must apologise,’ he began in excellent French, ‘for appearing to doubt your right to claim the body of the young girl you brought here early this morning and whose name you gave us as Philippa Ricardi; but a very extraordinary and most disquieting thing has occurred. The girl’s face was not badly burnt and one of the nurses felt certain that she recognised her. Our nurse swears that she is Marie Martineau, a girl who was born and brought up in Port-au-Prince and whose history from her nineteenth year is surrounded by considerable mystery. We naturally sent for Monsieur and Madame Martineau and they were at the girl’s bedside before she died. They have definitely identified her as their missing daughter.’
‘Did she regain consciousness before she died?’ asked the Duke.
‘Yes. And, as often in such cases, she had passed beyond the stage of feeling any pain, so her death was a peaceful one.’
‘Did she recognise these people who say they are her parents?’ de Richleau went on.
‘No,’ said the surgeon, after a slight hesitation; ‘I cannot say that she did. But they are quite definite about her.’
‘I think you had better take us to them,’ said the Duke.
‘Very well.’ The surgeon turned and led the way through a passage, up some stairs and into a long, scrupulously clean ward with a wide verandah. At its end a screen had been placed, and behind it a man was standing with his hand upon the shoulder of a woman who, giving way to heartbreaking tears, was kneeling at the foot of the bed in which the body lay.
As de Richleau’s party rounded the screen they took in the fact that both the man and the woman were Mulattoes well advanced in years. The man was the darker of the two and had been very handsome, his features having a definite resemblance to those of Philippa; while the woman was a characterless bag of fat which appeared to have been poured into the good-quality silk dress that restrained her ample figure.
The surgeon muttered a semi-introduction. ‘Monsieur et Madame Martineau—these are the people who brought your daughter to the hospital for treatment.’
The elderly Mulatto glared at them as though he would like to have cut their hearts out; while the fat woman suddenly sprang to her feet and screamed in bad French:
‘You ghouls—you grave-robbers! Where did you get her? My Marie! Where is the good God that he does not strike you dead for this?’
Trembling with indignant fury she went on: ‘We rescued her—she was safe with the good Sisters in Marseilles. Poor little one! They said that she seemed happy in the convent and we paid much money for her keep. May the curse of Hell rest upon you that you brought her back here to the place where she had already suffered so much!’
‘Your pardon, Madame,’ de Richleau said quietly. ‘You are, I fear, under an entire misapprehension as the the sort of people we are, and also as to the identity of this dead girl. Her resemblance to your daughter may be very strong, but her name is Philippa Ricardi, and I assure you that you are mistaken in believing her to be the daughter whom you appear to have sent to a convent in Marseilles. I know this girl’s father and mother intimately and I have known her since she was a child.’
The lies slipped off his tongue as firmly and readily as the rest of his words and the others could see that the surgeon at least was shaken in his belief that Monsieur and Madame Martineau were really the bereaved father and mother; but neither of the parents would give way an inch. The woman insisted that Philippa was her daughter and the man, though obviously scared of them, backed her up.
A horrible and degrading scene followed in which for twenty minutes they wrangled over the body of the dead girl, disputing as to who had the right to remove and bury it.
The Martineaus flatly refused to give in, but the Duke was equally adamant. He knew that if they had the girl buried they would probably give her a lavish funeral and the ceremony would be conducted by a Roman Catholoic priest. But that would be no protection against Doctor Saturday’s calling her back from the grave twenty-four hours later. De Richleau doubted if anyone in Haiti, except himself, could give her proper protection, and he was absolutely determined to prevent the poor corpse from being made into a Zombie a second time.
Eventually the surgeon intervened. Quieting the Martineaus, he said that, greatly as he regretted the scandal which would result, this had now become a matter for the police. He would not allow either party to remove the body until all concerned had appeared before a magistrate and the court had given its decision as to which party’s claim it would sustain.
The Duke now knew that he was up against it. In his own mind he had no doubt whatever that Philippa was the Martineaus’ daughter, and that her real name was Marie. The nurse also had recognised her, and in the course of an hour or two the Martineaus would doubtless produce a score of other people who would be prepared to swear to her identity; whereas he could not produce the least tittle of evidence that the girl’s parents really lived in Jamaica. A verdict in favour of the Martineaus was obviously a foregone conclusion.
There was only one thing that he could do. It was a desperate step; but in any course upon which he had once made up his mind he never allowed difficulties or dangers to deter him.
‘Rex! Richard!’ he said abruptly, and went on in English: ‘We are about to return to the launch, carrying all before us. Princess, you go ahead!’
Marie Lou knew that tone in the Duke’s voice. She had heard it before when he meant business; so had the others. Without a second’s hesitation she turned and, bowing to the surgeon, walked quickly down the length of the ward, while Rex and Richard moved up beside de Richleau.
The Duke spoke again. ‘Richard, your gun! Rex, get that body—quick!’
The other two had already tensed themselves and they acted as though animated by springs. Whipping out his automatic, Richard sprang back and held the Martineaus covered. Rex dived at the bed and in his strong arms grabbed up the still form under the sheet.
There was a piercing scream from Madame Martineau. The surgeon, ignoring Richard’s pistol, leapt forward to intervene. De Richleau hated to have to do it, but he swung his fist and with all his force sent it crashing under the surgeon’s ribs, driving the breath out of his body. He could only gasp and groan as he doubled up and collapsed upon the floor.
Rex had flung the sheeted corpse over his shoulder and was pounding down the ward. De Richleau followed and Richard brought up the rear, waving his gun. Shouts and yells broke from the patients in the double line of beds between which they ran. One flung a medicine bottle which caught de Richleau on the ear; a nurse hastily tipped a chair over in Rex’s path before she ran, screaming murder, from the room. He nearly tripped but just managed to pull up in time, and kicked the chair aside. With pandemonium broken loose behind them, they charged out of the ward and down the stairs.
In the hallway an astonished Sister flattened herself against the wall and added to the din by piercing falsetto cries for help. A porter tried to bar their path, but de Richleau thrust him aside as they tumbled through the doorway in a bunch. But doctors and medical students, attracted by the commotion, were pouring out of the passages and pounding down the stairs in their rear; while above, the Martineaus had rushed out on to the verandah and from its corner were rousing the lethargic natives in the street against them.
‘Ghouls! Grave-robbers!’ shrieked Madame Martineau. ‘They are carrying off the body of my child to make her a Zombie! Help! Help! Oh, Holy Virgin, save her!’
Instantly the cry was taken up in Creole and bastard French, many expressions in which they could catch and understand. ‘Ghouls!’ Grave-robbers!’ ‘They have a corpse! ‘It is the Cochon Gris!’ ‘No, no, it is a White Bocor who makes Zombies.’ ‘Stop them!’ ‘Tear them to pieces!’ ‘Ghouls!’ ‘Fiends!’ ‘Evil ones from Hell!’
Marie Lou had only a very short start. She had begun to run immediately she had got clear of the hospital and they could see her heading for the harbour fifty yards in advance of them. But the whole street was now roused; everyone was coming out of the houses and shops. Before they had covered a hundred paces she was headed off; two big Negroes started forward from the pavement and ran towards her. She saw that she could not possibly hope to dodge them so she halted, darted back, then hesitated for a moment, staring wildly round her, until the others came racing up.
All five of them now ran on together, but from one end of the street to the other people were pouring out of buildings and alleyways. Fruit, vegetables and stones were being hurled at them from every direction and they all knew that their plight was desperate. A sea of angry black faces surged up in front of them and it seemed certain that before they reached the harbour they must be torn to pieces by the infuriated mob.