Richard Eaton read the telegram a second time:
Eat no lunch this vitally important Simon ill Rex and I bringing him down to you this afternoon Marie Lou must stop eating too kiss Fleur love all –De Richleau.
He passed one hand over the smooth brown hair which grew from his broad forehead in an attractive widow’s peak, and handed the wire to his wife with a puzzled smile.
‘This is from the Duke. Do you think he has gone crazy, or what?’
‘What, darling,’ said Marie Lou promptly. ‘Definitely what. If he stood on his handsome head in Piccadilly and the whole world told me he was crazy I should still maintain that dear old Greyeyes was quite sane.’
‘But really,’ Richard protested. ‘No lunch—and you told me that the shrimps from Morecambe Bay came in this morning. I was looking forward …’
‘My sweet!’ Marie Lou gave a delicious gurgle of laughter as she flung one arm round his neck and drew him down on to the sofa beside her. ‘What a glutton you are. You simply live for your tummy.’
He nuzzled his head against her thick chestnut curls. ‘I don’t. I eat only in order to maintain sufficient strength to deal with you.’
‘Liar,’ she pushed him away suddenly. ‘There must be some reason for this extraordinary wire, and poor Simon ill, too! What can it mean?’
‘God knows! Anyhow, it seems that: virtuous and upright wife orders preparations of rooms for guests while miserable worm husband goes down into dark dirty cellar to select liquid sustenance for same.’ Richard paused for a moment. A wicked little smile hovered round his lips as he looked at Marie Lou curled up on the sofa, with her slim legs tucked under her like a very lovely Persian kitten, then he added thoughtfully: ‘I think tonight perhaps we might give them a little of the Chateau Lafite ‘99.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she cried, springing to her feet. ‘You know that it’s my favourite.’
‘Got you—got you,’ chanted Richard merrily. ‘Who’s a glutton now?’
‘You beast,’ she pouted deliciously, and for the thousandth time since he had brought her out of Russia her husband felt himself go a little giddy as his eyes rested on the perfection of her heart-shaped face, the delicately flushed cheeks and the heavy-lidded blue eyes. With a sudden movement, he jerked her to him and picked her up in his arms.
‘Richard—put me down—stop.’ Her slightly husky voice rose to a higher note in a breathless gasp of protest.
‘Not until you kiss me.’
‘All right.’
He let her slide down to her feet, and although he was not a tall man, she was so diminutive that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach her arms round his neck.
‘There,’ she declared, after he had crushed her soft lips under his. ‘Now go and play with your bottles, but spare the Lafite, beloved. That’s our own special wine, and you mustn’t even give it to our dearest friends, unless it’s for Simon and he’s really ill.’
‘I won’t,’ he promised. ‘But whatever I give them, we shall all be tight if we’re not to be allowed to eat anything. I wish to goodness I knew what De Richleau is driving at.’
‘Something it is worth our while to take notice of, you may be certain. Greyeyes never does anything without a purpose. He’s a wily old fox if ever there was one in this world.’
‘Yes, wily’s the word,’ Richard agreed. ‘But it’s nearly lunchtime now, and I’m hungry. Surely we’re not going to take serious notice of this absurd telegram?’
‘Richard!’ Marie Lou had curled herself up on the sofa again. But now she sat forward suddenly, almost closing her big eyes with their long curved lashes. ‘I do think we ought to do as he says, but I was looking round the strawberry house this morning.’
‘Oh were you!’ He suppressed a smile. ‘And picking a few just to see how they were getting on, I don’t mind betting.’
‘Three,’ she answered gravely. ‘And they are ripening beautifully. Now if we took a little cream and a little sugar, it wouldn’t be cheating really to go and have another look at them instead of having lunch, would it?’
‘No,’ said Richard with equal gravity. ‘But we have an ancient custom in England when a girl takes a man to pick the first strawberries.’
‘But, darling, you have so many ancient customs and they nearly always end in kissing.’
‘Do you dislike them on that account?’
‘No.’ She smiled, extending a small, strong hand by which he pulled her to her feet. ‘I think that is one of the reasons why I enjoy so much having become an Englishwoman.’
They left Marie Lou’s comfortable little sitting-room and, pausing for a moment for her to pull on a pair of gum-boots while Richard gave orders cancelling their luncheon, went out into the garden through the great octagonal library.
The house was a rambling old mansion, parts of which dated back to the thirteenth century and the library, being one of the oldest portions of it, was sunk into the ground so that they had to go up half a dozen steps from its french windows on to the long terrace, which ran the whole length of the southern side of the house.
A grey stone balustrade patched with moss and lichens separated the terrace from the garden and, from the former, two sets of steps led down to a broad, velvety lawn. An ancient cedar graced the greensward towards the east end of the mansion where the kitchen quarters lay, hiding the roofs of the glass-houses and the walled garden with its espaliered peach and nectarine trees.
At the bottom of the lawn tall yew hedges shut in the outer circle of the maze, beyond which lay the rose garden and the swimming-pool. To the right, just visible from the library windows, a gravel walk separated the lawn from a gently sloping bank, called the Botticelli Garden. It was so named because in spring it had all the beauty of the Italian master’s paintings. Dwarf trees of apple, plum, and cherry, standing no more than six feet high and separated by ten yards or more from each other, stood covered with white and pink blossom while, rising from the grass up the shelving bank, clumps of polyanthus, pheasant’s-eye narcissus, forget-me-nots and daffodils were planted one to the square yard.
This spring garden was in full bloom now, and the effect of the bright colours against the delicate green of the young grass was almost incredibly lovely. To walk up and down that two hundred yard stretch of green starred by its many-hued clumps of flowers with Richard beside her was, Marie Lou thought, as near to Heaven as she would ever get. Yet she spent even more time in the long walk that lay beyond it, for that was her own, in which the head gardener was never allowed to interfere. It consisted of two glorious herbaceous borders rising to steep hedges on either side, and ending at an old sun-dial beyond which lay the pond garden, sinking in rectangular stages to a pool where blue lotus flowers and white water-lilies floated serenely in the sunshine.
As they came out on to the terrace, there were shrieks of ‘Mummy—Mummy,’ and a diminutive copy of Marie Lou, dressed in a Russian peasant costume with wide puffed sleeves of lawn and a slashed vest of colourful embroidery threaded with gold, came hurtling across the grass. Her mother and father went down the steps of the terrace to meet her, and as she arrived like a small whirlwind Richard swung her up shoulder high in his arms.
‘What is it Fleur d’amour?’ he asked, with simulated concern calling her by the nick-name that he had invented for her. ‘Have you crashed the scooter again or is it that Nanny’s been a wicked girl today?’
‘No–no,’ the child cried, her blue eyes, seeming enormous in that tiny face, opened wide with concern. ‘Jim’s hurted hisself.’
‘Has he?’ Richard put her down. ‘Poor Jim. We must see about this.
‘He’s hurted bad,’ Fleur went on, tugging impulsively at her mother’s skirt. ‘He’s cutted hisself on his magic sword.’
‘Dear me,’ Marie Lou ran her fingers through Fleur’s dark curls. She knew that by ‘magic sword’ Fleur meant the gardener’s scythe, for Richard always insisted that the lawn at Cardinals Folly was too old and too fine to be ruined by a mowing machine, and maintained the ancient practice of having it scythe-cut. ‘Where is he now, my sweet?’
‘Nanny binded him up and I helped a lot. Then he went to the kitchen.’
‘And you weren’t frightened of the blood?’ Richard asked with interest.
Fleur shook her curly head. ‘No. Fleur’s not to be frightened of anyfink, Mummy says. Why would I be frightened of the blug?’
‘Silly people are sometimes,’ her father replied. ‘But not people who know things like Mummy and you and I.’
At that moment Fleur’s nurse joined them. She had heard the last part of the conversation. ‘It’s nothing serious, madam,’ she assured Marie Lou. ‘Jim was sharpening his scythe and the hone slipped, but he only cut his finger.’
‘But fink if he can’t work,’ Fleur interjected in a high treble.
‘Why?’ asked her father gravely.
‘He’s poor,’ announced the child after a solemn interval for deep thought. ‘He has to work to keep his children. So if he can’t work, he’ll be in a muddle, won’t he?’
Richard and Marie Lou exchanged a smiling glance as Simon’s expression for any sort of trouble came so glibly to the child’s lips.
‘Yes, that’s a serious matter,’ her father agreed gravely. ‘What are we going to do about it?’
‘We mus’ all give him somefink,’ Fleur announced breathlessly.
‘Well, say I give him half-a-crown,’ Richard suggested. ‘How much do you think you can afford?’
‘I’ll give half-a-cwown too.’ Fleur was nothing if not generous.
‘But have you got it, Batuskha?’ inquired her mother.
Fleur thought for a bit, and then said doubtfully: ‘P’r’aps I haven’t. So I’ll give him a ha’penny instead.’
‘That’s splendid, darling, and I’ll contribute a shilling,’ Marie Lou declared. ‘That makes three shillings and sixpence halfpenny altogether, doesn’t it?’
‘But Nanny must give somefink,’ declared Fleur suddenly turning on her nurse, who smiling said that she thought she could manage fourpence.
‘There,’ laughed Richard. ‘Three and tenpence halfpenny! He’ll be a rich man for life, won’t he? Now you had better toddle in to lunch.’
This domestic crisis having been satisfactorily settled, Richard and Marie Lou strolled along beneath the balustraded terrace, past the low branches of the old cedar, and so to the hot-houses. Their butler, Malin, had just arrived with sugar and fresh cream, and for half an hour they made a merry meal of the early strawberries.
They had hardly finished when, to their surprise, since it was barely two o’clock, Malin returned to announce the arrival of their guests.
‘There they are,’ cried Marie Lou, as the three friends came out from the tall windows of the drawing-room on to the terrace. ‘But, darling, look at Simon—they have gone mad.’
Well might the Eatons think so from Simon’s grotesque appearance in shorts, and the absurd mauve and orange cricketing cap. Hurried greetings were soon exchanged and the whole party went back into the drawing-room.
‘Greyeyes, darling,’ Marie Lou exclaimed as she stood on tiptoe again to kiss De Richleau’s lean cheek. ‘We had your telegram and we are dying to know what it’s all about. Have our servants conspired to poison us or what?’
‘What,’ smiled De Richleau. ‘Definitely what, Princess. We have a very strange story to tell you, and I was most anxious you should avoid eating any meat for today at all events.’
Richard moved towards the bell. ‘Well, we’re not debarred from a glass of your favourite sherry, I trust.’
The Duke held up a restraining hand. ‘I’m afraid we are. None of us must touch alcohol under any circumstances at present.’
‘Good God!’ Richard exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean that, you can’t. You have gone crazy!’
‘I do,’ the Duke assured him with a smile. ‘Quite seriously.’
‘We’re in a muddle—a nasty muddle,’ Simon added with a twisted grin.
‘So it appears,’ Richard laughed, a trifle uneasily. He was quite staggered by the strange appearance of his friends, the tense electric atmosphere which they had brought into the house with them, and the unnatural way in which they stood about, speaking only in short jerky sentences.
He glanced at Rex, usually so full of gaiety, standing huge, gloomy and silent near the door, then he turned suddenly back to the Duke and demanded: ‘What is Simon doing in that absurd get-up? If it was the right season for it I should imagine that he was competing for the fool’s prize at the Three Arts’ Ball.’
‘I can quite understand your amazement,’ the Duke replied quietly, ‘but the truth is that Simon has been very seriously bewitched.’
‘It is obvious that something’s happened to him,’ agreed Richard curtly. ‘But don’t you think it would be better to stop fooling and tell us just what all this nonsense is about?’
‘I mean it,’ the Duke insisted. ‘He was sufficiently ill advised to start dabbling in Black Magic a few months ago, and it’s only by the mercy of Providence that Rex and I were enabled to step in at a critical juncture with some hope of arresting the evil effects.’
Richard’s brown eyes held the Duke’s grey ones steadily. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I am far too fond of you ever to be rude intentionally, but hasn’t this joke gone far enough? To talk about magic in the twentieth century is absurd.’
‘All right. Call it natural science then.’ De Richleau leaned a little wearily against the mantelpiece. ‘Magic is only a name for the sciences of causing change to occur in conformity with will.’
‘Or by setting natural laws in action quite inadvertently,’ added Marie Lou, to everyone’s surprise.
‘Certainly,’ the Duke agreed after a moment, ‘and Richard has practised that type of magic himself.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Richard exclaimed.
De Richleau shrugged. ‘Didn’t you tell me that you got a Diviner down from London when you were so terribly short of water here last summer, and that when you took his hazel twig you found out that you could locate an underground spring in the garden without his help?’
‘Yes,’ Richard hesitated. ‘That’s true, and as a matter of fact I’ve been successful in finding places where people could sink wells on several estates in the neighbourhood since. But surely that has something to do with electricity? It’s not magic.’
‘If you were to say vibrations, you would be nearer the mark,’ De Richleau replied seriously. ‘It is an attunement of certain little-understood vibrations between the water under the ground and something in yourself which makes the forked hazel twig suddenly begin to jump and revolve in your hands when you walk over a hidden spring. That is undoubtedly a demonstration of the lesser kind of magic.’
‘The miracle of Moses striking the rock in the desert from which the waters gushed forth is only another example of the same thing,’ Simon cut in.
Marie Lou was watching the Duke’s face with grave interest. ‘Everyone knows there is such a thing as magic,’ she declared, ‘and witchcraft. During those years that I lived in a little village on the borders of the Siberian Forest I saw many strange things, and the peasants went in fear and trembling of one old woman who lived in a cottage all alone outside the village. But what do you mean by lesser magic?’
‘There are two kinds,’ De Richleau informed her. ‘The lesser is performing certain operations which you believe will bring about a certain result without knowing why it should be so. If you chalk a line on the floor and take an ordinary hen, hold its beak down for a little time on to the line and then release it, the hen will remain there motionless with its head bent down to the floor. The assumption is that, being such a stupid creature, it believes that it has been tied down to the line and it is therefore useless to endeavour to escape. But nobody knows for certain. All we do know is that it happens. That is a fair example of an operation in minor magic. The great majority of the lesser witches and wizards in the past had no conception as to why their spells worked, but had learned from their predecessors that if they performed a given operation a certain result was almost sure to follow it.’
Rex looked up suddenly and spoke for the first time. ‘I’d say they were pretty expert at playing on the belief of the credulous by peddling a sort of inverted Christian Science, faith healing, Coueism and all that as well.’
‘Of course,’ De Richleau smiled faintly. ‘But they were far too clever to tell a customer straight out that if he concentrated sufficiently on his objective he would probably achieve it, even if they realised that themselves. Instead, they followed the old formulas which compelled him to develop his will power. If a man is in love with a girl and is told that he will get her if he rises from his bed at seven minutes past two every night for a month, gathers half a dozen flowers from a new-made grave in the local churchyard and places them in a spot where the girl will walk over them the following day, he does not get much chance to slacken in his desire and we all know that persistence can often work wonders.’
‘Perhaps,’ Richard agreed with mild cynicism. ‘But would you have us believe that Simon is seeking the favour of a lady by wandering about in this lunatic get-up?’
‘No, there is also the greater magic which is only practised by learned students of the Art who go through long courses of preparation and initiation, after which they understand not only that certain apparently inexplicable results are brought about by a given series of actions, but the actual reason why this should be so. Such people are powerful and dangerous in the extreme, and it is into the hands of one of these that our poor friend has fallen.’
Richard nodded, realising at last that the Duke was perfectly serious in his statement. ‘This seems a most extraordinary affair,’ he commented. ‘I think you’d better start from the beginning and give us the whole story.’
‘All right. Let’s sit down. If you doubt any of the statements that I am about to make, Rex will guarantee the facts and vouch for my sanity.’
‘I certainly will,’ Rex agreed with a sombre smile.
De Richleau then told the Eatons all that had taken place in the last forty-eight hours, and asked quite solemnly if they were prepared to receive Simon, Rex and himself under their roof in spite of the fact that it might involve some risk to themselves.
‘Of course,’ Marie Lou said at once. ‘We would not dream of your going away. You must stay just as long as you like and until you are quite certain that Simon is absolutely out of danger.’
Richard, sceptical still, but devoted to his friends whatever their apparent folly, nodded his agreement as he slipped an arm through his wife’s. ‘Certainly you must stay. And,’ he added generously without the shadow of a smile, ‘tell us exactly how we can help you best.’
‘It’s awfully decent of you,’ Simon hazarded with a ghostly flicker of his wide-mouthed grin. ‘But I’ll never forgive myself if any harm comes to you from it.’
‘Don’t let’s have that all over again,’ Rex begged. ‘We argued it long enough in the car on the way here, and De Richleau’s assured you time and again that no harm will come to Richard and Marie Lou providing we take reasonable precautions.’
‘That is so,’ the Duke nodded. ‘And your help will be invaluable. You see, Simon’s resistance is practically nil owing to his having been under Mocata’s influence for so long, and Rex and I are at a pretty low ebb after last night. We need every atom of vitality which we can get to protect him, and your coming fresh into the battle should turn the scale in our favour. What we should have done if you had thrown us out I can’t think, because I know of no one else who wouldn’t have considered us all to be raving lunatics.’
Richard laughed. ‘My dear fellow, how can you even suggest such a thing? You would still be welcome here if you’d committed murder.’
‘I may have to before long,’ De Richleau commented soberly. ‘The risk to myself is a bagatelle compared to the horrors which may overwhelm the world if Mocata succeeds in getting possession of the Talisman, but I won’t involve you in that of course.’
‘This Sabbat you saw …’ Richard hazarded after a moment ‘Don’t think I’m doubting your account of it, but isn’t it just possible that your eyes deceived you in the darkness? I mean about the Satanic part. Everyone knows that Sabbats took place all over England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But it is generally accepted now that they were only an excuse for a bit of a blind and a sexual orgy. Are you sure that it was not a revival of that sort of thing staged by a group of wealthy decadents?’
‘Not on your life,’ Rex declared with a sudden shiver. ‘I’ve never been scared all that bad before and, believe you me, it was the real business.’
‘What do you wish us to do, Greyeyes dear?’ Marie Lou asked the Duke.
He hoisted himself slowly out of the chair into which he had sunk. ‘I must drive to Oxford. An old Catholic priest whom I know lives there and I am going to try and persuade him to entrust me with a portion of the Blessed Host. If he will, that is the most perfect of all protections which we could have to keep with us through the night. In the meantime, I want the rest of you to look after Simon.’ He smiled affectionately in Simon’s direction. ‘You must forgive me treating you like a child for the moment, my dear boy, but I don’t want the others to let you out of their sight until I return.’
‘That’s all right,’ Simon agreed cheerfully. ‘But are you certain that I’m not—er—carrying harmful things about with me still?’
‘Absolutely. The purification ceremonies which I practised on you last night have banished all traces of the evil. Our business now is to keep you free of it and get on Mocata’s trail as quickly as we can.’
‘Then I think I’ll rest for a bit.’ Simon glanced at Richard as he followed the Duke towards the door. ‘The nap we had at the hotel in Amesbury after breakfast wasn’t long enough to put me right, and afterwards perhaps you could lend me a decent suit of clothes?’
‘Of course,’ Richard smiled, ‘Let’s see Greyeyes off, then I’ll make you comfortable upstairs.’
The whole party filed into the hall and, crowding about the low nail-studded, oaken door, watched De Richleau, who promised to be back before dark, drive off. Then Richard, taking Simon by the arm, led him up the broad Jacobean stairway, while Marie Lou turned to Rex.
‘What do you really think of all this?’ she asked gravely, the usual merriment of her deep blue eyes clouded by a foreboding of coming trouble.
He stared down at her upturned heart-shaped face from his great height and answered soberly. ‘We’ve struck a gateway of Hell all right, my dear, and I’m just worried out of my wits. De Richleau didn’t give you the whole story. There’s a girl in this that I’m, well, that I’m crazy about.’
‘Rex!’ Marie Lou laid her small strong hand on his arm. ‘How awful for you. Come into my room and tell me everything.’
He followed her to her sitting-room and for half an hour poured into her sympathetic ears the strange tale of his three glimpses of Tanith at different times abroad, and then his unexpected meeting with her at Simon’s party. Afterwards he related with more detail than the Duke had done their terrible experiences on Salisbury Plain and was just beginning his anxious speculation as to what could have happened to Tanith when Malin, the butler, softly opened the door.
‘Someone is asking for you on the telephone, Mr Van Ryn, sir.’
‘For me!’ Rex stood up and, excusing himself to Marie Lou, hurried out, wondering who in the world it could be since no one knew his whereabouts. He was soon enlightened. A lilting voice, which had a strong resemblance to that of Marlene Dietrich, came over the wire as he placed the receiver to his ear.
‘Is that you, Rex? Oh, I am so glad I have found you. I must see you at once, quickly, without a moment’s delay.’
‘Tanith!’ he exclaimed. ‘How did you tumble to it that I was here?’
‘Oh, never mind that! I will tell you when I see you. But hurry, please.’
‘Where are you then?’
‘At the village inn, no more than a mile from you. Do come at once. It is very urgent.’
For a second Rex hesitated, but only for a second. Simon would be safe enough in the care of Richard and Marie Lou, and Tanith’s voice had all the urgency and agitation of extreme fear. Anxiety for her had been gnawing at his heart ever since he had heard of her crash the previous evening. He knew that he loved her now—loved her desperately.
‘All right,’ he answered, his voice shaking a little. ‘I’ll be right over.’
Running back across the hall, he explained breathlessly to Marie Lou what had happened.
‘You must go of course,’ she said evenly. ‘But you’ll be back before nightfall won’t you, Rex?’
‘Sure.’ All his animation seemed suddenly to have returned to him as, with a quick grin, he hurried out, snatched up his hat and, leaving the house, set off at a long easy loping trot to the village.
Unnoticed by him, a short figure entered the drive just as he disappeared beyond the boundary of the garden. A few moments later the newcomer was in conversation with Malin. The butler knew that his master was upstairs sitting with his friend Mr Aron while the latter rested, and had given orders that he was not to be disturbed, so leaving the visitor in the hall he crossed to Marie Lou’s sitting-room.
‘There is a gentleman to see you, madam,’ he announced quietly. ‘A Mr. Mocata.’