Rex, whose old home was in Virginia, knew all about lynchings in the Southern States. As a boy he had seen a town roused to frenzy by a report that a Negro had raped a white girl. Men and women had sallied out from their homes at night, marched upon the local gaol, broken into it and dragged out the cowering Negro. They had kicked, buffeted and clawed him like a pack of beasts until he was half-dead, then soaked his body in petrol and set it on fire. It had been a sickening spectacle and from time to time such outbreaks still occurred. Sometimes the accusation was entirely without foundation, but rumour and arrest were enough; unless the police could spirit the accused away to another town his fate was sealed, and such a fate was the dread of every Negro.
In the present instance the rôles were reversed and a great L crowd were under the impression that they had ample justification for administering mob law to four Whites whom they believed to be making away with the body of a Mulatto girl to turn her into a Zombie. There was no question of the case being fought before the magistrate now. If they were once swept off their feet, within the next few awful moments a hundred hefty boots would break their bones and crush their bodies until they were left five bleeding masses of pulp.
With the body slung over his shoulder Rex was leading, but he had only one hand free and the sudden exertion was causing the wound in his leg to pain him badly. Marie Lou had slipped into the group just behind him so that Richard and de Richleau ran on either side of her. As the two Negroes came at them Rex sent one of them reeling with a sudden, violent push in the face with his free hand; the Duke tackled the other by a kick on the shin which caused him to yowl, spin round and go sprawling on the cobbles.
For a moment there was a clear space in front of them, but a hail of missiles whizzed at them as they ran. Marie Lou got a lemon in her right eye, which half-blinded her, and a stone tore the knuckles of de Richleau’s left hand. A dozen other oddments bounced from their bodies after giving them as many painful buffets.
Behind, to each side and in front of them the crowd were giving tongue; a loud, angry roar filled the whole street. Twenty yards ahead there was a side-turning which was only thinly covered by half a dozen people who were running out of it towards them. Rex swung right and headed for it.
A great Negress with a meat-chopper lifted it to slash at him as he passed, but Rex had been a rugger-player in his Harvard days, and in spite of the handicap of his game leg he swerved with amazing speed just in time to escape the blow. Richard crashed full-tilt into another Negro, knocking him over. Then they were through into the side-turning. But it was much narrower than the street, and scores more people, roused by the shouting, were streaming into it from the teaming courts and alleys which lay behind the docks.
A thick-lipped, yellow-haired Mulatto clawed at de Richleau and managed to drag him back for a moment, but the Duke’s fist crunched on the bone of the fellow’s nose and he released his hold with a yelp of pain.
Almost blinded by the shower of missiles and deafened by the shouting, they covered another hundred yards and came out into a wider street. Keeping his head, Rex turned left along it, making once more for the harbour; but a great portion of the crowd appeared to have guessed their intention and had taken a short cut for the purpose of heading them off. Fifty yards in front of them, men, women and children were tumbling over one another as they charged helter-skelter out of an alleyway.
The Duke groaned and glanced swiftly back. Another hundred or more shiny-faced people were following hard upon their heels. Escape seemed utterly impossible. Within a few moments they must be dragged down. Then, a little way ahead of them on the left side of the road, he caught sight of a small church. There seemed just a chance that they might succeed in obtaining sanctuary there if only they could reach it.
‘The church!’ he yelled above the din. ‘Make for the church!’ But the way was blocked by half a hundred angry, glistening faces. Richard was still brandishing his automatic. He knew that now had come the time when he must use it.
Whipping up the pistol, he fired two shots above the heads of the crowd. With a shout of panic they cowered away and scattered. The little party of Whites raced on, reached the church and dashed up the steps to its porch.
At that very moment, attracted by the noise, a tall, sandy-haired Roman Catholic priest came hurrying out of the big arched door. He had had no time to discover what the tumult was about and saw only that the mob was pursuing five Europeans, one of whom carried a large sheeted bundle.
Instantly he strode out on to steps and sternly raised his hand, forbidding the rabble to follow its prey further. De Richleau knew then that, temporarily at all events, the Powers of Light had intervened on behalf of himself and his friends by directing them to the church and sending the priest to their assistance at that critical moment.
Without pausing to see the outcome of this check to their pursuers de Richleau thrust the others through the door of the church and ran behind them down the nave. At its end they darted along a side-aisle to a curtained opening and through it into the vestry. There, bruised and breathless, they halted for a moment to get fresh wind.
‘How long d’you think we’ll be safe here?’ panted Richard.
We daren’t stay; even if the priest could hold off the mob,’ replied de Richleau quickly. ‘Directly he learns why they’re after us he’ll insist on our surrendering Philippa’s body; and that I refuse to do.’
As he spoke he was already turning the knob of the door of the vestry, which led into the street. He opened it a crack so that he could peer out.
‘The coast is fairly clear,’ he whispered. ‘Come on— quick! We must make the most of the lead we’ve got, before some of the mob come round to this entrance.’
Slipping out of the door, they covered another hundred yards towards the water-front before they were spotted. A small boy began to yell after them in a piercing treble, and within two minutes the hunt was in full cry again. But now, at the end of the narrow alley down which they were running they could see the masts of the ships in the harbour, less than four hundred yards away.
It sounded as though a thousand feet were pounding upon the hot, shiny cobbles behind them, but the way ahead remained unblocked. Suddenly a man darted from a doorway and, thrusting out his leg, tripped de Richleau, who fell full-length on to a pile of stinking garbage in the gutter.
Richard swung round and hit the man a stinging body-blow, which made him gasp and choke. De Richleau stumbled to his feet; but their leading pursuers were now almost on top of them.
Lifting his automatic, Richard fired again, sending another shot over the heads of the packed mass of shouting men and women.
At the report of the pistol the eyes of the leaders started with terror and rolled in their black faces. Pulling up with a jerk, they tried to scramble away from the menace of the gun into the nearby doorways of the alley. But the charging crowd behind forced them on.
Nevertheless, the single shot had given the hunted one more brief respite. Rex, limping badly now, with Marie Lou beside him, had reached the open and they were running diagonally across the wharf to the steps beside which the launch was moored. De Richleau and Richard pelted after them with every ounce of speed that they could muster.
As they shot out of the end of the alleyway they saw that they still had two hundred paces to cover and that scores of men who had been lounging in the bars and cafes along the waterfront were now tumbling out of them as reinforcements for the mob; and ugly reinforcements, as most of them were sailors, all of whom had knives.
Rex and Marie Lou were both shouting to Simon and as de Richleau and Rex caught up with them Simon suddenly appeared from the cabin of the launch. In an instant he had grasped the situation and was giving swift orders to the three Jamaica boys who formed the crew to be ready to cast off. Then, seizing a hatchet, he jumped ashore to help his friends.
Five hundred superstition-maddened folk were now half-filling the wharf and more were crowding on to it from every street and alley. The angry shouting was so loud that it was difficult to hear individual voices, but above the roar the hard-pressed Whites could catch the French equivalents of ‘Ghouls!’ ‘Body-snatchers!’ and ‘Zombie! Zombie! Zombie!’
In those last few yards they were almost overcome. A thrown knife pierced the calf of Richard’s leg and as he stopped for an instant to pull it out he was grabbed by two burly stevedores. De Richleau was seized by a third, and Marie Lou fell at Simon’s feet. But having reached the wharf-edge Rex just pitched the body into the launch and swung round to their help. With those mighty fists, like ten-pound weights, he laid out right and left about him until he had cleared a little space and both Richard’s and the Duke’s attackers lay writhing on the ground from his hammer-blows.
Marie Lou wriggled up again and jumped on to the fore-deck of the launch, where one of the Jamaica boys had already untied the painter. Another was at the wheel and had the engine running. The third had gone to Simon’s assistance and with a boathook was striking out at the mob. ‘Theirs not to reason why …’ They were British subjects and Jamaicans who despised the riff-raff of the Negro Republic, and they gave loyal service to their white employers.
Somehow the rest of the party freed themselves from the scores of hands that clutched at them and strove to drag them back. Still striking, kicking and struggling, they fumbled into the boat. The moment they were all on board the launch shot away. Three Haitians, who had leapt on to the deck at the last moment, were attacked simultaneously and heaved overboard into the water.
But the chase was not yet over. While the frustrated crowd, a thousand strong, now lined the whole wharfside shrieking imprecations at them, hundreds more were piling into water craft of every description to continue the pursuit, and several boats, which were already manned in the harbour, altered course to try to head them off.
In the next few minutes the Jamacian boy at the wheel performed miracles of steersmanship as he dodged one craft after another, but at the mouth of the harbour it was only by Richard’s firing two more shots from his automatic across her bows that they prevented a customs launch, officered by a Negro in an admiral’s uniform which had already done fifty years’ service, from ramming them.
At last they were out in the open sea, and although thirty or forty boats of varying sizes were strung out behind them they felt reasonably confident that their own powerful craft could outdistance the others. As they tended their most serious hurts they saw their pursuers gradually dropping behind, but de Richleau’s face was still grave. The Haitian Republic possessed a small Navy, consisting of coastal-patrol gunboats. These were almost obsolete but they were armed after a fashion, and in view of the major riot which they had brought about it was quite on the cards that one of these might be sent after them.
When Rex had picked up Philippa’s body and carried it into the cabin, the Duke said: ‘We must lose no time in burying her. Marie Lou had better attend to that nasty wound in Richard’s leg, on deck. They can keep watch and see that the Jamaica boys don’t come down. You others can stay here and give me a hand in what I have to do.’
As Richard and Marie Lou left the cabin the rest of the party took the body, unwrapped it from the sheet and laid it out on the floor. De Richleau then went into the tiny gallery which formed the forepart of the cabin and returned with a skewer, a hammer and a long cook’s-knife. Placing the skewer over Philippa’s heart, he murmured some words that the others did not understand, and gave it two swift blows with the hammer, which drove it right through her chest.
‘The next part of the business is rather horrible,’ he said in a low voice, ‘so you needn’t look if you’d rather not.’ But Simon and Rex were so fascinated by the macabre scene that they remained staring down at the blistered, unresisting corpse.
De Richleau then took up the sharp cook’s-knife and, murmuring more words in an ancient tongue, bore down on it with all his weight until it had severed Philippa’s head from her trunk.
To Simon’s horror, as the head was severed he saw the full lips draw back into a smile; then the eyes flickered open for a second, and he distinctly caught the whispered words: ‘Merci, Monsieur.’
The effect of that dead face smiling and the voice from beyond the grave was so utterly terrifying that he fainted.
Having set him up on one of the settees, with his head dangling between his knees, the other two rewrapped the girl’s body and head in a sheet; then the Duke sent Rex to the flag locker. He could not find a Haitian or French flag so returned with an old Union Jack, which they wound round the corpse.
‘Thank God that’s over!’ murmured the Duke. ‘Fetch Marie Lou now. We must get her to sew up the shroud.’
But at that moment Marie Lou came into the cabin to report with an anxious face that although the other boats had nearly all given up the chase a small grey-painted steamer, which looked like a warship, had left the harbour.
Simon had just come-too and said that he must have air, so de Richleau told Marie Lou what he wanted done and, leaving Rex to help her, assisted his still groggy friend on deck.
Rex found a length of chain which he tied round the ankles of the corpse to weight it, and Marie Lou hunted about until she discovered some twine and a sailmaker’s pad and needle in one of the lockers of the cabin. She then sewed up the edges of the Union Jack so that it formed a sack for the remains, and Rex went up to tell the Duke that the dead girl was ready for burial.
When Rex reached the deck he saw that the Haitian gunboat, a sea-going tug, a small yacht and two small motor-boats, all having fair speeds, were bunched together about a mile and a half astern; and the Duke said that he feared that this smaller but more powerful armada, which had left the harbour some time after he and his friends had put to sea, was gradually gaining on them. The tug’s hooter blared out an almost continious succession of short, piercing blasts, evidently intended as calls on them to stop, and now and again the gunboat joined in with a shrill whistle.
Ignoring these signals for the moment, the four men went down to the cabin and carried up Philippa’s remains. They were well out at sea now, so de Richleau felt certain that there was no chance whatever of the weighted body being recovered. He said a short prayer of his own devising, that he considered appropriate to the occasion, then the flag-covered corpse was cast over the launch’s side, disappearing with a loud splash into the water.
The Jamaica boys had only just realised that the sheeted bundle brought aboard by Rex had been a corpse. They were looking askance at their passengers and the three of them gathered in the stern to jabber excitedly in their own dialect. Apparently they supposed that murder had been committed and that their white employers had chosen this manner of disposing of the body of their victim. In consequence, they were now alarmed by the possibility that they might be accused of assisting a gang of murderers to escape from justice. Their obvious fear for themselves was considerably increased a few moments later—and with better reason. There came a bright flash on the foredeck of the gunboat followed almost instantly by a loud report, and a shell screamed overhead.
It exploded more than half a mile in advance of the launch, sending up a great column of water, so it appeared that the master gunner was not much of a marksman; unless his first shot was intended only as a warning and he meant to make quite certain that it fell nowhere near them.
The Jamaica boys suddenly began a chorus of protest to Rex, who had hired them. They hadn’t done anything— they didn’t want to get killed. The launch must stop and the white folk must give themselves up. Then the one who was at the wheel shut off the engine.
Richard felt intensely sorry for them, but all the same, he produced his automatic and, taking a few steps aft, drove them, still clamouring, out of the engine pit. Then Rex grabbed the wheel and switched on the power again.
A second shell from the gunboat splashed into the water four hundred yards away, but it proved to be a dud. The pursuing armada had, however, gained a good quarter of a mile on them during that brief interval in which they had been slowed up by the temporary cutting-off of the engine. A third shell whistled over and sent up a column of foam only a hundred yards to starboard, and de Richleau yelled to Rex:
‘Head for the shore! We’ll beach her and take to the forest—if we can get there in time.’
As Rex turned the wheel and the launch swung round, a fourth shell burst in the air some twenty feet behind them. A splinter ploughed up the deck within three inches of Simon’s feet, another smashed one of the cabin windows, de Richleau and Marie Lou were thrown to their knees and one of the Jamaica boys was knocked overboard by the force of the blast.
However dire their own extremity they could not leave the poor fellow to drown or to be eaten by the sharks which they knew infested the channel; neither could they abandon him to the chance of being picked up by the Haitians and lynched as one of the pursued party. With a curse, Rex swung the wheel again and, turning in a wide circle, put back. In frantic haste they hauled the dripping Negro on board, but by the time they had done so the gunboat with its accompanying flotilla had decreased its distance to within half a mile of them, and the nearest point of the coast, upon which de Richleau had hoped to beach the launch, was well over a mile distant.
Just as they turned towards the shore again two more shells came in rapid succession; one was a wide miss, but the explosion of the other, under-water, gave the launch such a buffet that it nearly capsized. As it righted and raced on, with them now drenched to the skin from the flying spray and crouching flat on the deck, they saw that the tug had altered course to endeavour to head them off. It was nearer to them than any of the other vessels and now that they were in closer range it opened fire with a machine-gun.
Bullets spattered the water and the gun cracked again, its report echoing across the bay. They had now only half a mile to cover to reach the beach, but the machine-gun lifted and a spate of bullets from it thudded into the launch, holing and tearing its woodwork. Almost at the same moment the engine stopped as a shell splinter from another high burst struck a part of the machinery with a metallic clatter.
The game was up; and de Richleau knew it. Without power they could not possibly reach the shore, and he suddenly realised that the launch was sinking from unseen hits which had holed her below the water-line. To attempt to swim for it only meant the possibility of having to face the sharks or the additional indignity of being dragged from the water, as within a few minutes the pursuing flotilla was bound to come up with them. Rising to his feet, he pulled out his white handkerchief and waved it in token of surrender.
Five minutes later they were surrounded by the Haitian flotilla and a hundred angry, indignant men were staring curiously at them. A Mulatto in a sky-blue uniform, with a sash and tassels of tarnished silver lace, shouted at them through a megaphone in French, from the gunboat, to catch the rope that would be thrown and haul themselves alongside with it.
The cabin was full of water and the launch now sinking under them, but they did as they were ordered. A rope-ladder was lowered and de Richleau’s party, including the Jamaica boys, pulled themselves up it.
Immediately the Duke reached the gunboat’s deck he addressed the officer in fluent French and with the arrogance of a victor rather than a captive. In firm tones he stated that seven of his party were British subjects and the eighth an American; and that the British and United States Goverments would call the Haitian Government to account for having, without the slightest provocation, endangered the lives of the occupants of the launch by firing upon them.
The officer was so dumbfounded at this impudence that he hesitated before answering, but he said that although he himself knew nothing of the matter it had been reported that the Duke’s party had assaulted a surgeon at the hospital and, under her parents’ eyes had forcibly removed the body of a girl who had died there that morning.
‘Have you a warrant for our arrest?’ snapped the Duke. ‘If so, will you kindly show it to me.’
No, the Haitian Captain admitted, he had not a warrant, but in such an emergency he had considered it his plain duty to put to sea in order to prevent such evil-doers from leaving the country.
‘Very well, then,’ said the Duke. ‘You have obviously only acted in accordance with your understanding of the situation, if extremely rashly. We will answer any charges which may be brought against us; but immediately we get back to port I shall look to you to inform the British and America Consuls of what has occurred and ask them to meet us, so that we can tell them our side of this affair without the least delay. I shall also hold you personally responsible for our safety.
The Captain appeared to agree to this, as he nodded before ordering some of his men to escort the three Jamaica boys forward and the White prisoners aft. Ugly looks were cast at them as they were hurried away and there was a considerable amount of hissing, spitting and fist-shaking among the excited crew, but a junior officer prevented any open attack from being made upon them, took them below and had them locked in a roomy cabin which appeared to be the wardroom of the vessel. They then had their first opportunity to examine properly the many hurts they had sustained an hour before, when they had so narrowly escaped being lynched; while the gunboat chugged back to port.
Soon after the ship had docked the Captain appeared, with several armed sailors behind him, to say that they were to be taken ashore. The news of the riot and its cause had now spread through the whole Haitian capital. Even people in the outlying suburbs who had not heard of it had been attracted by the unusual sound of gunfire and the sight of their warship pursuing a launch out in the bay so that, in spite of the mid-morning heat, the entire wharf-side was now crammed with a heterogeneous mass of people.
The prisoners had seen through the port-holes the great expectant multitude which was so inflamed against them and de Richleau had already made up his mind that if he and his friends stepped ashore their lives would not be worth a moment’s purchase. He voiced the feelings of them all as he said to the Captain:
‘No, thank you. We have no intention of leaving this ship until the crowds are dispersed. The people of Port-au-Prince have been told a completely wrong version of what has happened and think that they have excellent grounds for regarding us as worse than murderers. Before we got fifty yards they would overcome your sailors and pull us to pieces. If that occurred, His Brittanic Majesty and the President of the United States would both send warships here. As just retribution for our deaths I have no doubt at all that they would blow half the town to pieces and then take over the country. Unless you wish that to happen, and Haiti to lose her independence for good and all, you will leave us where we are and send your magistrates here, together with the British and American Consuls, as soon as you can so that this unfortunate business can be settled without bloodshed.’
As the one dread of every Haitian official is that his country may once more be taken over by the Whites—a calamity for which the Captain had no intention of being held responsible—he saw the sense of this, so agreeing to the Duke’s suggestion, he locked them in again and left.
It was getting on for eleven and the sun, now high in the heavens, beat down upon the deck above. The cabin had the curious and unpleasant smell of stale tobacco-smoke and beer.
For a little while after the Captain’s departure none of them said anything; they were too occupied in endeavouring to recoup themselves after the physical exertions and mental stresses that they had been through, and all of them were conscious that although they had won a great spiritual victory by giving proper burial to Philippa’s body and at last bringing peace to her spirit, they had landed themselves in most desperate straits.
The fact that the body was no longer with them when they were caught would hardly stand them in much stead, for it would be assumed that, fearing to be captured with the evidence of their crime, they had thrown it overboard simply to be rid of it. No doubt the Haitian magistrates would know all about Zombies, but it remained a most speculative matter as to whether they would officially acknowledge such a belief in front of Europeans. The good-class Haitians were most averse to it being known that such a horrible abuse of corpses still existed in their country, but out of a fear—a fear which they had imbibed with their mother’s milk—for anyone even remotely connected with such practices, they might well condemn the White prisoners almost without a hearing. Besides, none of the prisoners saw what sort of a defence they could possibly put up, since they had not a shred of evidence to prove that Doctor Saturday was a Bocor from whom they had rescued the girl’s body and they certainly could not prove—as they had avowed in the hospital—that she was not the daughter of Monsieur and Madame Martineau.
The full grimness of their situation was finally brought home to them when Simon, now dead-beat after his many hours of unbroken mental and physical activity, sighed wearily and said that he would give a thousand pounds for an hour’s sleep.
De Richleau gave a bitter little laugh and reminded them that he had been compelled to leave the suitcase containing the new impedimenta, which Richard and Rex had gone to such trouble to fetch all the way from Jamaica, in the flooded cabin of the motor-launch; and by its sinking they had once more been robbed of the means of securing adequate astral protection. Like a force that is beleagured by land and sea, they were now in physical peril from any fate which the Haitian authorities mught decree for them, and should they fall asleep, they would be an easy prey for the merciless enemy who would assuredly await them on the other plane.
A little after midday a junior officer entered the cabin followed by a sailor and a slatternly-looking Negro steward, who dumped down a tray on which were five bowls of cornmeal-mush, a hand of bananas, some mugs and a large jug of water. De Richleau asked the officer if they could soon anticipate a visit from the British and American Consuls, but he shook his head and replied in bad French. He had no idea; all he had heard was that they were to be taken ashore for examination in the cool of the evening, provided that a good portion of the crowd had dispersed.
When he and his men had withdrawn, the prisoners halfheartedly set about the meal. None of them liked the look of the cornmeal-mush but they ate a few bananas and, the stuffy heat having made them all extremely thirsty, eagerly drank up most of the water.
While they were eating, they spoke in low voices of Philippa. Marie Lou said that she wondered how the girl could have been planted upon Sir Pellinore, and the Duke replied wearily:
‘How can one say? It may have been managed in a dozen different ways. Evidently our adversary is much more powerful than I imagined. He must have found out that we intended to come to Haiti. Perhaps his astral plane was present and listening to our conversation on the day that Pellinore came down to lunch with us at Cardinals Folly. If it was, he’d have learnt in one brief session all our plans for our journey and have had ample time to make his own arrangements.’
‘Still, it must have been pretty difficult for him to foist the girl on us at such sort notice,’ remarked Richard.
The Duke shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Through his astral he may be able to communicate with a number of occultists in Europe, and just because he is working for the Nazis it doesn’t at all follow that they are all in Germany. He may have given instructions in a dream to some Fifth Columnist in London who is under his orders. How Philippa reached England from Marseilles I don’t pretend even to guess; but quite possibly she was brought over from her convent, with other refugees, at the time of the French collapse. Once he knew that the French were going out of the war, that fiend, Saturday, may have decided that she would be more useful to him in London and had her shipped over. If she was ready to hand you can see for yourselves that it wouldn’t have been difficult for German agents in London to fix it with Ricardi—who is either one of them or under their thumb—that she should pose as his daughter and that he should get in touch with Pellinore, mention casually the problem of getting the girl to the West Indies and, when Pellinore said he had friends proceeding there, ask him to get us to take her.’
They sank into miserable silence again, not caring to talk of the unpleasant possibilities which lay ahead of them that evening and the coming night; but Simon was now so tired that after a time he said that he doubted if he could hang out without sleep much longer, and the rest of them were terribly somnolent from the heat of the stuffy, smelly cabin.
It was Marie Lou who suggested that since charged water had served to protect the Duke and herself when awake, through those long hours of darkness two nights before, surely it must be a strong enough barrier to protect them while asleep during the full bright light of day; therefore why should he not charge the remaining water in the jug and draw a pentacle on the floor of the cabin with it, so that they could snatch a few hours’ blessed oblivion during the sultry afternoon?
He agreed that, although there might be some risk in doing so, their extremity was such that it should be taken, and he was just about to pick up the jug when the door opened again. Doctor Saturday stood on the threshold.
Simon roused himself sufficiently to notice with a vague satisfaction that the Doctor was bearing heavily upon a stick and limping badly. He came in, closed the door behind him and leaned against it.
‘Well? So your little hour of freedom has ended,’ he said, his white teeth flashing in a smile that was now full of cruel, unrestrained malevolence. ‘I must congratulate Monsieur de Richleau upon his resource and courage as a body-snatcher. It is only by a miracle that you’re not all lying in the local morgue; torn and bleeding victims of the frenzied mob. However, since you have survived, it will give me great pleasure to settle your business personally.’
He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘You need not imagine that the British or American Consuls will come to your assistance. I have considerable powers in this country as well as on the astral, so I at once took steps to see to it that neither of those gentlemen will be informed officially or unofficially of the plight into which you have got yourselves. If you have any apprehensions as to what may happen to you when you are brought before a Haitian court I can relieve you of them. You will not appear before any court, because you will all be dead before this evening.’
‘Aw, go to hell! Get to blazes out of here!’ snarled Rex.
But the Doctor continued, quite unperturbed.
‘In the war that is being waged across the water Britain will be defeated, and the British race will be for ever broken. Some of you may have heard what the Nazis have done in Poland: how they have transported the Polish men by the thousands in cattle-trucks to work in chain-gangs in their mines: how they have injected the whole of the virile population so as to make them incapable of producing children: how they have sent the Polish women by the thousands into brothels for the amusement of the German soldiery.
‘Well—that is nothing compared with what Hitler intends to do to the British people in the hour of his victory. They will be enslaved in the fullest meaning of the word, and the arrogant British upper-class will be set to the meanest labours. The Nazis understand that there can be no permanent mastery of the world for them until the British race has ceased to exist. There is never to be another generation. Your men will be made eunuchs and your women rendered sterile. The old and useless will be slaughtered like cattle, then the British Isles will be depopulated by wholesome shipments of her remaining men and women to toil as beasts of burden for their masters on the Continent until death brings them release.’
‘First catch your hare, then cook it,’ Richard sneered. ‘Every man and woman of British blood would rather die than surrender, and we’ll paste blue hell out of those Nazi swine before we’re much older.’
‘You and your friends are already in the net,’ the Doctor replied smoothly, ‘and by your own folly you have all brought upon themselves an even worse fate than which will befall your countrymen. I have told you what the Nazis will do to them. And now I will tell you why I am giving Germany my aid; so that you, as representatives of your race, may for once understand the hatred it has inspired by its greed and arrogance.
‘My father was an Englishman, my mother was a Mulatto girl of good parentage; but he did not think her good enough to marry, so her family, feeling that she had disgraced them, turned her out into the streets. Having taken his pleasure with her he had no more use for her at all, and returned to his own country leaving her destitute. She was just another “coloured girl” who had served to amuse him during his travels. My youth was hard, but I had brains and a strong will. When I was eighteen I worked my way to England, and although I could speak very little of the language, I sought out my father. He not only refused to acknowledge me because a coloured bastard would have shamed him before his friends, but he drove me from his house; and when I persisted he had me prosecuted for creating a nuisance. Then the English police deported me as an undesirable alien.’
‘Judging by what we know of your more recent history, they were probably right,’ said de Richleau acidly.
The Doctor’s face became a mask of fury. ‘So you persist in your defiance!’ he almost screamed. ‘But I will break your pride—and break your will—even more thoroughly than the Nazis will break the spirit of the British people. You thought you were so clever today when you robbed me of that girl whom I had made into a Zombie. But a life for a life is not enough, and there is no escape for you from this place. The seed of death has already been planted in you. It is my will that all of you shall die within the next two hours, and out of you I will make five Zombies for the one that you have taken from me.’
Without another word he turned on his heel and, slamming the door behind him, relocked it.
‘Temper, temper!’ said Richard, trying to make light of what they all felt to be no empty threat but one with real and deadly purpose behind it.
‘What did he mean when he said that he had already planted the seed of death in us?’ asked Marie Lou.
‘I’ve no idea,’ replied the Duke; ‘unless he arranged to have some subtle poison inserted into the food we were given for our midday meal. His authority here seems to be absolute. The Haitians evidently know that he’s a powerful Bocor and consequently are scared stiff of him. But in any case he can’t make Zombies out of us until we’re actually dead.
‘If he did have poison put in the food,’ said Rex, ‘it’s a hundred bucks to a peanut that it was mixed up in the cornmeal-mush, and none of us ate any of that. We’d surely have noticed if the bananas had been tampered with, and we drank only plain water.’
It comforted them considerably to think that if the Doctor had put poison in their food they had escaped once more. But the cabin was like an oven, and apart from their anxious, gloomy thoughts they had nothing at all to occupy them. They were all literally drooping with fatigue, and Simon, who had been awake far longer than any of the others, could hardly keep his eyes open, so the project of making a pentacle with charged water was revivied.
De Richleau set the earthenware jugs before him, and, pointing at it with the first and second fingers of his right hand, on a level with his right eye, began to call down power, which passed in an invisible stream through him and into the jug.
To his surprise and extreme perturbation, the clear, tepid water suddenly began to bubble, and with a bitter grimace he lowered his hand.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Marie Lou.
He sighed as he looked round at the anxious faces of his friends. ‘I’m afraid we’re up against it. The water cannot be charged, because it is not pure. That spawn of Hell has got the better of us—he mixed some tasteless and colour-less poison with the water, and we all drank a mug or more of it over an hour ago. It’s too late now for us to make ourselves sick, as the poison must already be working in our veins. That’s what he meant when he said that the seed of death was already in us.’