The sight of the Great Ram advancing noiselessly down the tunnel seemed to turn Mary’s blood to water and to paralyse her limbs. For a few seconds she remained motionless. With what felt like a physical wrench she tore her glance away and tapped sharply on one of the fuel drums. The sound might easily have been made by a falling icicle thawed out at the entrance to the cave by the heat coming from inside it; but Wash heeded her warning signal. Stooping, he swiftly thrust in among the paraphernalia at the base of the rocket the tool he was holding.
Kneeling in the narrow, pitch dark space between the two piles of fuel drums, Mary held her breath. It seemed to her certain that the Great Ram must have sensed her presence even if he did not see her and, halting in his stride, would turn and rend her. But on coming opposite the drums he had rounded the bend of the tunnel sufficiently to catch sight of Wash. His harsh voice cut the stillness.
‘I had a feeling that you were here. What are you doing?’
With a laconic calmness for which Mary gave Wash full marks, his reply came back. ‘Taking a look-see at the rocket. You’re an expert on these things, Exalted One, and I’m a babe. All the same, I couldn’t get it out of my mind this evening that we’ve got it oriented wrong.’
The Great Ram had walked on towards him. Now that they were talking together Mary knew that she ought not to lose a moment in obeying Wash’s orders to leave them to it and get back to her cabin. If the Great Ram chanced to look round he would see her, but that risk had to be taken as the lesser than his yet discovering her among the fuel drums and realising that she had been lurking there as a look-out for Wash. Quickly she slipped off her shoes. Then, summoning her resolution, she took the plunge.
As she tiptoed forward her spine seemed to creep. Every second she expected an occult force to be directed at her back – a lightning flash that would scorch, char and utterly destroy her. Into her terrified mind there came again a picture of the Black Imp that had materialised from the Great Ram the first time she had seen him. For one awful moment the sound of the drips from the melting ice at the entrance to the cave seemed to take on a new rhythm and she thought they were the swift, light footfalls of the Imp coming after her. Suppressing a scream of terror, she broke into a run. It was only then she suddenly became aware that she was well round the bend of the tunnel and so must have escaped discovery.
When she reached her cabin she was trembling from head to foot. In the doorway she paused to look back, fearful now that Wash’s bluff would fail and that the Great Ram would kill him. If that happened she knew that she would receive short shrift. Any attempt to defend herself would be hopeless but, if she could take him by surprise, there was just a chance that she might inflict some serious injury on him before his terrible power as a destroyer could take effect. But for that she must have a weapon. How, where, could she get hold of one? The kitchen was only thirty feet away. There might be something there.
She tiptoed along, and peeped in. It was deserted but still faintly lit by the small blue pilot bulb. From the cabin beyond it came the snoring of the Chinese cook. As she looked quickly round her glance fell on a saw-edge bread knife that had been left on the table. She would have preferred something more lethal; but it would have taken time to hunt through the drawers, and she dared not linger there. Snatching up the bread knife, she ran back to her own cabin, slipped inside, and shut the door. Still trembling, she threw down her shoes, stepped out of her skirt and, getting into the bunk, pulled the blankets over her.
For some minutes she lay there, her mind a prey to despair and fear – despair of getting the better of the Great Ram and sabotaging the rocket, and fear that his psychic sense would tell him that had been Wash’s intention. Then she heard the muffled sound of footsteps and voices outside in the tunnel. She could not catch what was said but they were not raised in anger; so it seemed that Wash had got away with his bluff. Relief surged through her at the thought he was not dead; that she had not been left alone with the Great Ram and was to become his next victim.
Wash entered the cabin next to hers. She heard its door slam and a little shuffling, then silence fell. Now she was seized with the urge to talk to him, to find out what had passed between him and the Great Ram, and do her utmost to persuade him to make a further attempt later in the night to sabotage the rocket. But she knew she must control her impatience. To leave her cabin while the Great Ram was still about might prove fatal.
It was as well that she waited. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed. There came a faint sound and she knew that someone had opened the door of her cabin. A sixth sense told her that it was the Great Ram and warned her to keep perfectly still. She felt certain that he had looked in to make sure that she was there and asleep. Now, she thanked her stars that she had obeyed Wash and returned to her cabin instead of remaining among the fuel drums. If her cabin had been empty and she had been found near the rocket, she knew that she would never have been able to stand up to the Great Ram’s questioning.
He took a step forward into the cabin. Her heart contracted with a spasm of fear. She was the useless member of the party and he had good cause to hate her. Perhaps he had not just come to see if she was asleep, but had decided that the time had come to rid himself of her. She was still holding the bread knife. Instinctively her grasp tightened on its handle. Had he touched her she would have flung back the blanket and lunged blindly at him. But after a moment he stepped back, murmured a few sentences of what sounded like gibberish, and closed the door.
Sweating from every pore she continued to lie there, still not quite certain that he had left her. It seemed an age before she could summon up the courage to turn her head a little sideways and steal a swift glance from beneath still lowered eyelids. She let her breath go in a great sigh. Except for herself, the faint blue light showed the cabin empty.
Once more she resigned herself to wait with patience, until it could be reasonably assumed that the coast was clear. Every few minutes she looked at her wrist watch. Its hands seemed to move with incredible slowness, but minute by minute an hour crept by. Getting out of the bunk, she put on her skirt and cautiously opened the door. No sound came to her and momentarily her hopes soared again. By playing on Wash’s resentment at having been tricked by the Great Ram and doing her utmost to strengthen the feeling she had instilled into him that, as a Satanist, he had backed the wrong horse, she might yet induce him to make another attempt to sabotage the rocket and, this time, perhaps they would succeed.
Next moment her hopes fell to zero. The door stood open but she could not pass through the doorway. The Great Ram had erected an invisible barrier there that held her a prisoner more surely than any locks and bolts. Strive as she would, just as had been the case at the Cedars, she could not put a foot over the threshold.
. . . . .
Only the hands of Mary’s watch told her that she had got through the night. Lying fully dressed on her bunk, through parts of it she had dozed; but she had the impression that she had not dropped off, even for a few moments, and certainly her brain had never ceased to revolve round and round the coming day and the terrible fate that it might usher in for millions of helpless people.
On finding that she could not leave her cabin, she had thought of trying to knock Wash up so that he would leave his and come round to her. But the partition that separated the two cabins was made of thick timber. With the handle of the bread knife she had rapped a tattoo on it, but without result. An hour had elapsed since the Great Ram had left them, and from experience she knew how soundly Wash slept. It was evident that he had already fallen into one of his heavy slumbers, and that to rouse him would need violent hammering. The noise that would make would, she felt sure, bring the Great Ram on the scene, and that she dared not risk.
The fact that he had erected an occult barrier to prevent her from leaving her cabin she took to be a clear indication that Wash had not altogether got away with his bluff about his concern regarding the alignment of the rocket. In some way the Great Ram’s suspicions had been aroused and, she guessed, they took the form of suspecting the truth – that she was endeavouring to turn Wash against him, and influencing him to interfere in some way with the rocket’s proper functioning.
Wretchedly she had flung herself on her bunk, and endeavoured alternately to devise a means of wrecking the Great Ram’s plans when morning came, or giving in to her tired mind and, sloughing off all responsibility, get to sleep. She had succeeded in neither.
Soon after seven o’clock she heard the clatter of pans in the galley, but the Chinese cook did not come to call her as on the previous day. She got up, tidied herself as well as she could and again tried to leave her cabin, but found that the invisible barrier still held her back. Half an hour later she caught sounds of Wash stirring in the cabin next door. Shortly afterwards it was swiftly conveyed to her that he was trapped too. She could hear him shouting:
‘What goes on here! Master! Exalted One! I’d bust right through this had any lesser Mage corralled me in. But why put me behind the bars? Come on now! Let me outta here. Let me out, I say!’
To his shouts there came no reply. In vain Mary tried to attract his attention by calling to him, but his angry bellows drowned her cries. Nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed before he seemed to resign himself to having been made a prisoner, and fell silent. She seized the opportunity to beat a loud tattoo on the board wall that divided their cabins. After a few minutes he responded with heavy thumps. The planks in the partition were thick, but there were thin chinks between them. By enunciating clearly in a low voice that was not much above a whisper, each could hear what the other said.
Both, by similar occult spells, had been made prisoners in their cabins. Wash said of the previous night that the Great Ram had not appeared to suspect him of a double cross. When he had suggested that the rocket was completely out of alignment if the intention was for it to fall on Saanen, the Great Ram had replied that he had changed his mind and decided to send it in the opposite direction, so that it should fall in the more sparsely populated Bernese Oberland in the neighbourhood of the little town of Ilanz.
That was all very well but, while Saanen lay to the west, Ilanz lay to the north-east, not many degrees off a direct course to Moscow, and, having seen the route and calculations in the Great Ram’s office for the rocket’s flight, Wash had not been taken in by this plausible excuse for its reorientation.
He added that both their lives now hung on the Great Ram’s having planned that he should be flown out of Switzerland once he had launched his rocket. Where to, remained a matter for anything but happy speculation. Certainly not to Moscow, which by the time an aircraft could reach it would be under heavy atomic attack from the Western Allies; and equally not to any city in Europe, as they would be going up in smoke under hits – or be rendered untenable by near-misses – from Russia’s atomic bombardment. Their destination, Wash and Mary unhappily agreed while hoarsely whispering through the chinks between the boards, was probably India or China, and neither had the least desire to go permanently to either.
No one summoned them to breakfast, so they sat on in their respective cabins, occasionally encouraging one another with a sentence or two spoken through the partition. Then, at a little before nine o’clock, the door of Mary’s cabin swung open and, with a sudden renewal of her terror, she saw the Great Ram standing looking at her.
‘So you thought you could outwit me by seducing from his allegiance that great oaf next door?’ he said in his high, sneering voice. ‘You miserable little fool. Know now what you have done. With yesterday my use for him ended. I had intended first thing this morning to let him go off in his aeroplane and take you with him. The two of you have found out my real intentions, but I had meant to give him a good reason for not going to Moscow; and there would have been ample time for you to be well out over the Mediterranean before I gave Europe over to havoc. Instead I mean to rescind the postponement of your sentence that I agreed to give him. For the last few hours of your life you may also savour the thought that, through you, this lover of your choice is now condemned by me to the hideous death I intend to inflict on you both soon after midday.’
Mary could take little consolation from the thought that Wash was not the ‘lover of her choice’, so her heart would not be wrung by the knowledge that she had brought about his death. As for herself, she was not afraid to die, but only of the threatened pain. But a quick death, however hideous, might, she thought, be preferable to being carried off into the unknown by Wash, then abandoned by him to suffer disfigurement and a lingering death from the curse that the Great Ram had earlier decreed for her. She dared not raise her eyes to his and continued to sit on the edge of her bunk as he went on.
‘Your insolence in believing for one moment that you could interfere with my plans fills me with amazement. That a creature like you, even aided by that backwoods magician you have besotted with your sex, should pit your puny wits against mine is a supreme impertinence.’ Suddenly he gave an eerie cackle of high-pitched laughter, and added, ‘How little you can understand the power that I wield. I, the Great Ram, have nothing to fear. No, not even when an army is sent against me. Come, I lift the barrier that bars your door. Follow me, and I will show you how I deal with my enemies.’
As he turned away Mary stood up. Whether she would or not she felt a compulsion to leave her cabin and walk down the tunnel after him. He led her out to the rock platform at which the cable railway ended. Pointing across the valley to a group of tiny figures making their way up through the snow towards a low saddle in the opposite range, he said:
‘There go Mirkoss, my cook, and the other Chinese I have had working for me here. You see, I have a care for those who serve me faithfully, even if they are no more than slaves. You and that lovelorn fool, Twisting Snake, could also be on your way out of danger now had you not had the impudence to challenge me.’
Mary found her tongue at last, and murmured, ‘But why should they have been in danger if they had remained here? When … when your rocket lands on Moscow the Russians will fire back at the American cities and those of the N.A.T.O. countries. They won’t waste rockets on Switzerland.’
Again he gave his cynical high-pitched laugh. ‘Of course, and I too shall be safe among these mountains; but not in this cave. I have a twin brother: a weak fool with whom I long since quarrelled; yet there remains a strong psychic link between us. A clever Englishman named Verney has used him to overlook me. So they are aware of my intentions, and by one means and another have discovered my retreat.’
At this admission, coupled with Verney’s name, Mary’s heart gave a bound. Perhaps the spool from the tape recorder that she had thrust on Barney had reached the Colonel and contributed to the hunt that must have started for the missing war-head soon after Wash had flown off with it. If the spool had reached Verney, Ratnadatta, Abaddon, Honorius and the rest of that murderous crew would by now have been arrested. So she would have succeeded in avenging poor Teddy after all. But had she? Within a few hours of the Great Ram launching his rocket London would be laid in ruins. Innocent and guilty alike would perish by the hundreds of thousands. The Satanists of Cremorne would have become cinders long before they could be brought to trial.
She knew that she and Wash would be given no further chance to sabotage the rocket. Now, she could only pray that some fault in its mechanism, some act of God, or even some overweening vanity on the part of the Great Ram himself, would delay the launching. The knowledge that Verney was on his way, and Barney too, perhaps, threw her into a fresh form of agony, for she felt that the strain of waiting and wondering if they would arrive on the scene in time to save the situation must soon prove unendurable.
Hardly had she thought of that before she was relieved from having to face it. Exclaiming ‘Here they come! Here they come! I knew they could not be far off,’ the Great Ram pointed down into the valley.
At the same moment the distant sound of motor engines was wafted up to her and she saw what seemed from that height a column of toy vehicles emerge from round the shoulder of the mountain. Cars, motor cycles, jeeps and tanks skidded and bumped along the uneven track until thirty or forty of them were visible. When the leading cars reached the engine-house they pulled up with a jerk. A score of figures tumbled out of them and ran towards the building.
The Great Ram gave a sinister chuckle. ‘Now, little fool, you shall see how I deal with forces far stronger than yourself when they are brought against me.’
Instantly her joy at knowing friends to be so near was changed to awful apprehension, for it seemed clear that he had already planned to use some form of his evil power for their destruction. Yet he uttered no curse and made no gesture.
Suddenly there came a bright flash, a tongue of flame leapt skywards, and a moment later the roar of the explosion followed to echo and echo back and forth across the valley. Where the engine house had stood there was now a dense cloud of smoke and from it came up thinly the cries of the injured and the dying.
In Mary, horror temporarily drove out fears. Swinging round she faced the Great Ram and screamed at him, ‘You fiend! You fiend! May Heaven blast you for this murder!’
At that moment, had she had the bread knife with her she would have tried to kill him; but he had come for her so unexpectedly that she had had to leave it hidden under the blanket of her bunk. His only reaction was a scornful laugh, followed by a glance that instantly quelled her and forced her to lower her gaze.
‘Come now,’ he said abruptly. ‘I have work to do, and you shall see me do it. Since you have shown yourself to be one of those who follow the pathetic slave religion started by the impostor Christ, it pleases me that you should hear me announce the death knell of Christianity. If He had the power to preserve it, He obviously would, but He has not; and I intend to show those among His followers who may survive how ill-placed their faith in this self-styled “Saviour of the World” has been. Go in now. You know the wireless cabin. Wait for me there while I watch for a little longer the consternation of those puny creatures down in the valley.’
She knew she must obey him, yet she still had a kick left in her and as she turned to re-enter the cave she burst out, ‘You’ve wrecked the railway, but you’ve only killed a few of them. And it’s certain that with those tanks there are mountain troops. They’ll climb up here. For every one you kill they’ll call up a dozen reinforcements. You’ve left it too late to escape. They are bound to get you.’
He tossed his head with the old arrogant gesture. ‘Little fool, your persistent blindness to my power becomes almost amusing. Mirkoss and the Chinese I had to send away, otherwise they would have been trapped. But I, the Great Ram, am not as other men. When I will I can call down the cloud to hide the entrances to this cave and halt the climbers, unless they are prepared to risk death with every step they take. The cloud, though, will form no barrier to my sight, and I have long since learned to levitate myself; so I can pass over crevasses that no guide would attempt to cross. I am also impervious to cold; so I shall go upward and make my way unchallenged over the range into another valley where I have already made preparations for my reception.’
To that she could make no reply. It was clear that he had thought of everything. Stumbling a little, she made her way to the wireless cabin and threw herself into a chair there.
The thought that now obsessed her was that Barney might have been with Colonel Verney in the engine-house when it had blown up. She was past tears, but her very heart-strings were wrung with the visual image of her gay, laughter-loving Barney as a broken, twisted body being carried on a stretcher from that still-smoking ruin down in the valley. Her belief that he despised her made no difference to her love for him. And since she had realised, from what Wash had told her, that he must be one of Colonel Verney’s young men, although she could not begin to account for such a strange metamorphosis, her love for him, instead of being only an unreasoning passion, had been sanctified by respect and admiration.
For what seemed a long time she sat crouched, wringing her hands, in the wireless cabin. It drifted through her mind that, by ripping at the wires and bending the terminals, she might put the set out of action. But a moment’s thought told her that whether he made his proposed broadcast to the world or not did not matter in the least, as that had no bearing on his ability to launch the rocket.
At last he joined her. Waving her from the chair, he sat down in it and began to fiddle with the apparatus. She stood in the doorway, no longer feeling a compulsion to remain with him, but too mentally exhausted to make the effort necessary to break away.
He spent a good ten minutes tuning in to the wave length he required, then began to speak in what she imagined to be Russian. That he should have wished her to remain to hear him she now guessed to be due to his inordinate vanity’s demanding the presence of an audience, however humble or unable to appreciate what he was saying, to witness this epoch-making declaration he was making to the world.
Actually he was telling the Russians that their leaders had betrayed the masses by abandoning the Marxist faith of equality achieved through violence, and had become money-grubbing bourgeois intellectuals. He announced the imminent destruction of the regime – although he made no mention of his rocket or the way in which he meant to bring that about – and told the Russians that those who survived the purge he meant to initiate would be given a new chance to be a law unto themselves and enjoy to the utmost all the pleasures this world had to offer. He then went on to talk of himself and the part that, under Satan, he would play in the New Order that was to emerge from the Old.
Although Mary could not understand one word he said, she felt sure that from his arrogant, ranting tone - which reminded her vaguely of the broadcasts she had heard when a child, made by Hitler – anyone who was listening to him would take him for a madman. That he was mad she now had no doubt, but that did not make him any the less dangerous.
Abruptly he ceased his tirade and again spent some minutes tuning in to a wave length that he evidently considered the best on which to convey his message to the United States and Britain.
He announced himself clearly as Professor Lothar Khune addressing the English-speaking world. To hold the attention of listeners who had chanced to hear him he added that most of them would be dead before the day was out; His theme then was that the Christian heresy had inflicted on the world many generations of senseless self-denial, made an unnatural virtue of celibacy, and denied the people the joy in life which was their birthright; that to bring about a reversal of this unhappy state of things it was necessary for him, Lothar Khune, to act with complete ruthlessness. To destroy the Christian Church root and branch he must also do away with the established governments that supported it. He went on to state that, as they could read in their Bibles, God had given Prince Lucifer this world as His Province. Then he declared that Satan had become weary of the disloyalty of his subjects, so intended to punish them through his servant, Lothar Khune, with a great affliction; but those who survived might look forward to a new era of true freedom and happiness. Finally he declared that on behalf of His Lord Satan he intended to initiate the beginning of the New Era this very day at twelve noon precisely.
Chilled to the heart, Mary heard him out. She knew that almost everyone who had listened to his broadcasts would regard him as a harmless lunatic. But he was not. That he had made them could be due only to a childish vanity – the urge to let people know that it was he, Lothar Khune, who had decreed death for millions and an end to all existing institutions. But he was no mentally ill-adjusted adolescent or madman who did not know what he was doing. He meant every word he said and, short of a miracle, at midday he would launch his rocket.
So pleased was he with himself in his role as arbiter of the fate of the world that, having concluded his broadcast, he turned and actually smiled at Mary. As she quickly averted her eyes, he said: ‘Twelve noon. That is the time I had already decided upon and I shall not have to advance it by one minute, although by now everything the governments of Europe and America can do against me is being done. The Alpine troops may burst their hearts in their efforts to reach this cave, but when midday comes they will still have several hundred feet to climb. See how perfectly the Lord Satan times matters to ensure the accomplishment of His work and the protection of His servant. Yet you, a woman, a mere piece of flesh designed only as a plaything for men, thought you could thwart me.’
He paused a moment, then added with sudden sarcasm, ‘That you are flesh and entirely earthbound reminds me of my duties as a host. Going without breakfast must have made you hungry. It is, too, an ancient custom that anyone condemned to death should be allowed to choose his last meal. In the store next door to the kitchen you will find a great variety of tinned foods. Take what you like for yourself and your leman. Cook him a meal if you wish, while I take my meteorological observations and make the final adjustments to the rocket. You have a little over an hour and a half, which should be ample. He will not be able to cross the threshold of his cabin to eat it. If I removed the invisible barrier I erected across the doorway he might attempt to make further trouble, and it would be an annoyance if I were distracted from my calculations to render him harmless again. But you can pass the food in to him or, if he prefers, give him enough spirits to make himself drunk.’
Having demonstrated his high good humour by according Mary this cynical permission to make the most of her last hours, he lifted his chin and, without a further glance at her, walked off down the tunnel. Relieved of his icy, intimidating presence, Mary’s mind became fluid again and she strove desperately to think how she could best employ the limited freedom that he had so contemptuously granted her.
First she ran out on to the rock platform and gazed down into the valley. Over an hour had elapsed since the enginhouse had blown up. It was now only a broken empty shell from which faint wisps of smoke curled up. The cars and tanks were scattered irregularly round it, and in little groups among them scores of men were standing, their faces all tilted upward as they watched the mouth of the cave. Nearer, she could see several teams of climbers spread out along the mountain side. They had evidently only just emerged from the forest belt and were now slowly snaking their way up across the lowest snowfield.
Mary knew nothing about mountaineering, but even the blanket of snow could not disguise the precipitous nature of the cliffs below her. In some places they were sheer, in others slopes led only to outjutting cols that barred further ascent. That there were ways up was evident from the fact that years earlier engineers had scaled these heights and erected the pylons that carried the cables of the now useless mountain railway. But a few moments’ anxious scrutiny of the scene was enough to convince her that the Great Ram was right. Two hours at the very least must elapse before the leading teams of climbers could reach the cave.
Wash, then, remained the only hope.
Turning, she ran down the tunnel to his cabin. Grasping the handle of the door she pulled upon it. The door opened so easily that she staggered backwards. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk with his head buried in his enormous hands. At the sound of the door opening, he looked up. Jumping to his feet, he took a pace forward. His eyes lit up and his mouth expanded in a broad grin. Next moment his eyes showed fear and his mouth sagged. On the threshold he had seemed to trip, his hands came up as though to thrust at something, then he staggered back.
Mary shook her head. ‘It’s no good. He won’t let you out. He’s making his final calculations, and does not mean to let you interrupt him. But he said I could bring you things: food, a drink. Would you like a drink?’
‘Yeah,’ Wash nodded heavily. ‘Bourbon. Bring me the bottle.’
The dining cabin was the next beyond his. From it she collected the bottle and brought it back to him. He took a long swig, then asked hoarsely:
‘What’s he mean to do with me? Guess he smelt a rat after all last night and played me for a sucker. But seems you’re in the clear. How come you fooled him? Tell, woman, tell?’
‘I didn’t,’ she replied despondently. ‘He let me out only because he looks on me as no more capable of harming him than a house-fly. It even amused him to suggest that I should cook you breakfast’
Wash brightened a little. ‘Say, things aren’t so bad, then. And I could eat a horse. What are you waiting for?’
She shook her head. ‘He meant it only as a horrible joke. He has just announced over the radio to the world that from midday everyone can expect a reign of chaos to begin. Then, as soon as he had launched his rocket, he will settle his score with us.’
‘Are you telling me he means to do us in?’
‘That’s it. Although he pretended not to suspect us last night, he knew all the time that we’d planned to sabotage his rocket. And he no longer has any use for you, because he doesn’t mean to leave by plane. It’s death for both of us unless we can kill him first.’
For a minute they both remained silent, staring into one another’s eyes. From about eight o’clock, when he had found himself a prisoner, Wash had decided that it could only be because his treachery had been discovered; but he had counted on still being needed to fly the Great Ram out. Now he realised that not only was he trapped, he had gambled away his life.
Mary was resigned to losing hers, but still hoped that she could find some means of foiling the Great Ram before he struck her down into oblivion. Alone, she knew herself to be powerless, but if she could free Wash and together they could catch the Great Ram off his guard, they might yet get the better of him.
Suddenly an idea came to her. The occult barrier blocked the doorway of the cabin, but perhaps it did not extend to its sides or roof. In a rush of words she put her idea to Wash. Seizing upon it, he jumped up on the bunk and strove to force up the roofing of the shed. Owing to his great strength the slats ripped from the beams to which they had been nailed, and a gap appeared. But in that part of the cave the rock projected low overhead, so the slat struck against it and the gap where they had broken away was much too narrow for him to crawl through. Yet his effort had proved one thing. He had been able to thrust his hands up through the opening; so no invisible force would have prevented his getting out that way if the gap had been large enough.
Electrified with excitement at the sight of his partial success, Mary cried, ‘Try the side wall. Not the one next to the dining cabin. The sideboard backs up against that. You must break through into mine. Throw all your weight against the partition.’
He needed no urging, and charged it with his shoulder. The partition creaked but stood firm. Again and again he threw himself at it, but even under his great weight it did not give an inch. Mary ran back into her cabin and made a quick examination of it. She saw that it was made of stout pine planks that were only about four inches wide, but they were nailed to three-inch square cross battens on her side; so no amount of battering on his could spring the nails that held them. The only hope remaining was to cut a way through them.
Snatching the bread knife from under the blanket of her bunk, she jabbed it into the wood shoulder high, and wriggled it. The result was only a tiny splintered hole and it was obvious that such a tool was hopelessly inadequate for her purpose. All those with which it might have been done speedily were, she knew, in the shed near the rocket, and impossible to get at because the Great Ram was working there. But it struck her that she might find something stronger in the kitchen so, throwing down the bread knife, she ran along to it. The most promising thing she could find was a meat chopper. But after a few blows she abandoned that, as each time she struck with it its blade remained embedded in the wood, and she had difficulty in wrenching it out.
In desperation she reverted to the bread knife and dug frantically at the splintered patch that her blows with the chopper had made. After five or six minutes of stabbing and twisting with the point of the knife, she got the blade through and began to saw sideways with it. As she worked she could have wept with frustration at the seeming hopelessness of the task she had set herself. In ten minutes she had sawed through only an inch and a half of the plank and her wrist was aching intolerably.
Pulling the knife out she darted round with it to Wash and thrust it at him. Easing it into the other side of the slit she had made, he began sawing away with fierce, swift strokes, but he was handicapped by having to work left-handed. Another ten minutes sped by before he had managed to saw right through the four-inch plank.
To get out a piece of the plank another cut had to be made lower down, but while Wash was still working on the first cut Mary had succeeded with the chopper in splintering out another hole eighteen inches below the first.
He got the knife through and continued the painfully slow sawing; meanwhile, she used the chopper to prise the cross-beam a fraction of an inch away from the planks. At last the second cut was completed. He gave a shout, she stood back, then he struck the eighteen-inch length of plank with his fist and it fell at her feet.
So far the job had taken them forty minutes, but now that he was able to get his hands through and grip the sides of the planks the work went much faster. Most men would have found themselves still faced with an hour’s work, and perhaps not even then had the strength to force the boards away from the nails that held them; but in Wash’s giant arms and shoulders lay the strength of half a dozen men, and after ten minutes of straining, ripping, bashing and kicking, he had made a gap wide enough to force his way through.
Both of them were panting and sweating from their exertion, but he did not pause to rest. Taking her by the arm he hurried her out and turned towards the entrance to the cave served by the cable railway.
Pulling back, she gasped, ‘Not that way. He’s working on his rocket, making final adjustments to it.’
‘To hell with him!’ Wash replied tersely. ‘We’re getting outta here while the goin’s good.’
‘We can’t. The cable-railway is no longer working. He blew it up.’
‘Then we’ll climb down.’
He continued to move forward but she dragged upon his arm. ‘Wash, you’re crazy! It’s like the side of a house. We’d fall and kill ourselves. I’ve never even climbed down a chalk cliff.’
‘Neither have I, but we’ll make it someway.’
‘There are Alpine troops on their way up, and…’
He halted then, towering above her, and exclaimed, ‘Troops? How come?’
‘We’ve been traced from England. The Great Ram told me. He has a twin brother who is psychic, too, and located us here. The valley if full of troops. They must know that it was you who stole the war-head, and they’ll have found your plane by now. Even if we could get safely down the mountain you couldn’t escape. It’s certain they’ll arrest you.’
‘That’s bad,’ he muttered. ‘Still, I’d leifer face a courtmartial than the Great Ram. ‘Sides, they can only jail me, and the jail’s not yet made that could hold me for more than a coupla weeks.’
For a second she hesitated. She dare not tell him about the tape-recorder and confess that she had betrayed him. If she did he might kill her there and then, and if she had to die she still hoped that it would not be uselessly, but in an attempt to thwart the Great Ram. Drawing a deep breath she took the plunge.
‘It won’t be jail, Wash. The British will hang you.’
‘Nerts! They’ve no jurisdiction over a member of the United States forces.’
‘Maybe not, but they’ll get you tried for murder.’
‘What in heck are you driving at?’
‘You remember the detective who came to the Cedars – Lord Larne?’
‘Yeah; but we didn’t kill him. He made a getaway after you threw that crucifix.’
‘I know.’ She strove to choose her words carefully now, so as not to incriminate herself. ‘But I told you at the time that I knew him – that he had been accepted as a neophyte by the circle at Cremorne. It’s certain that your flying out with the war-head will have sent the balloon up. After that Scotland Yard would not have delayed another hour in raiding the Temple. There must be papers there they will have seized, and some of the Brotherhood will have been arrested. Ratnadatta will have been, for certain, because Lord Larne knew him quite well. The odds are he’ll turn Queen’s Evidence to save his own skin; and he owes you a grudge. He’ll put you on the spot as having taken part in the murder of that other police spy. The one you told me about.’
For a moment Wash remained silent, then his dark eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve sure got something there, honey. If the British have bust that Temple open and got Ratnadatta it could be pretty hot for me. Go or stay put it looks as though I’m for it either way.’
His words braced her for the next effort. They showed that he was coming round to where she wanted him; but before she could speak again he gave a sudden laugh and dashed her hopes.
‘We’ve been talking foolish. When the Big Chief lets off his rocket the past will be washed out. Here in Switzerland I guess we’ll stand a better chance of survival than most. But Scotland Yard, Ratnadatta, the air base at Fulgoham – they’ll mean as little to us as Noah and his Ark. There’ll be no one left to indict.’
To Mary it was a body blow; for in the urgency of the moment both of them had failed to take into account the effects of the rocket and now, by doing so, he had nullified all the arguments by which she had been endeavouring to steer him into attacking the Great Ram. Even so, she made a quick recovery.
‘Of course; how stupid of me. But it was you who brought the war-head here. You can’t get away from that. And the Swiss must know it. If the rocket is fired you will be accounted guilty of mass murder. They’ll not try and hang you but tear you limb from limb.’
He passed a hand over his still sweating forehead. ‘Sure, sure. I’d not thought of that. Then I’d best remain here. I’ve got my gun. I’ll shoot it out with them as they come up.’
‘No,’ she cried. ‘That would mean death for certain. If you’ve got the guts, you can still save yourself.’
‘Tell, honey, tell? I like my life.’
‘You must face up to that fiend and stop him launching his rocket.’
Wash groaned. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’
‘He was right, then,’ she flung at him contemptuously, ‘when he said this morning that you were only a little backwoods magician.’
‘Did he say that!’ Momentarily Wash’s hook-nosed face showed angry belligerence. Then he shrugged. ‘Well, maybe he’s right. Anyways I’m not in his class. Didn’t I try all I knew to break that barrier he put up ‘cross my cabin door? No, he’s the tops. He’d turn me into a cockroach and stamp on me.’
‘All right then! Forget all this bloody magic! You’re a man, aren’t you, and so is he. You’ve got a gun. Go down there and shoot him.’
He stared down at her. ‘If I could catch him unawares I might. Odds are, though, he’d pick up my vibrations. Then he’d paralyse me before I could get a bead on him.’
She seized the lapels of his jacket and, her face turned up to his, raved at him, ‘You’ve got to risk it! Don’t you see that it is your only hope! You brought the war-head here believing that it was to be let off in Switzerland, with the result that all such weapons would be abolished and the world relieved for good from the fear of a nuclear war. That’s the truth. When the time comes you must tell it and shame the Devil. But there is more to it than that. Much more. You’ll be the man who saved civilisation. All the evil things you’ve ever done will be forgiven and forgotten. You’ll never be charged with rape, or arson, or murder. Instead you’ll be the world’s No. One hero. The British will make you a Duke and the Americans a millionaire. Even the Russians will give you the Order of Lenin or something. You’ll never again have to run a shady racket to live in comfort. You’ll be given lovely homes and lots of servants in all the countries you have saved from untold horror, and be received everywhere like a prince or a bigger than biggest film star.’
Breathless, she paused, for she saw that the picture she painted had rung a bell. Swift as ever to react to fresh emotional stimulants, Wash was smiling, and he muttered, ‘Could be; could be. Honey, you’re a squaw in a million. I’ll do it. Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll shoot the bastard in the back.’
‘Come on then!’ She pulled him round to face the other way before some new thought might cause him to change his mind. Glancing at her watch, she added, ‘It’s twenty to twelve. We haven’t any too much time.’
‘Steady!’ he warned her. ‘We’ll be walking on egg shells and if we break one we’ll get no second chance. Praises be, I was brought up to stalking from the time I was a papoose. Get your shoes off and keep a good twenty paces in rear of me. I learnt early to control my breathing, but he might hear yours.’
As he spoke he was taking off his own shoes. Having done so he got out his automatic, tested the recoil with practised efficiency, and clicked a bullet up into its chamber. Giving her a smile he set off down the tunnel. She walked close behind him till she reached her cabin, slipped into it to collect the chopper she had left there, then, giving him the lead he had asked for, followed him, her heart beating like a sledge hammer.
Ahead of her Wash gave no sign of any tension. He was not walking on tiptoe, but after each medium-length pace was putting a stockinged foot down firmly without a sound. He seemed to glide rather than walk, and in the dim light might have been taken for the dark ghost of some long dead giant.
To Mary, as they advanced, time seemed to stand still. The only sound that broke the stillness was that of the drip of the melting ice at the entrances to the cave. Before she expected him to, Wash came to a halt. Seized with the idea that he had lost his nerve, and needed fresh encouragement, she continued to move forward stealthily. When she was within a yard of him he suddenly raised his gun, took a swift stride forward and fired.
Just in time to see the first phase of the encounter on which so much depended, Mary rounded the curve of the cave. The Great Ram was standing by the rocket with his back turned. As though struck on the head with an invisible hammer he fell to his knees. But he had not been shot. Warned of his danger by telepathy, he had dropped of his own accord a second before Wash squeezed the trigger of his pistol.
Its report, in that confined space, was deafening, and reverberated like thunder through the tunnel. In an instant the Great Ram had squirmed round to face the attack. His eyes, now appearing reddish, flashed as though they were rubies caught in a shaft of sunlight. The second bullet tore through the right sleeve of his coat, then he threw up his left hand as though in a futile attempt to ward off others.
But his gesture was nothing of the kind. As he raised his hand Wash’s gun hand, too, jerked upwards. The remaining bullets in his automatic sped in a swift fusillade harmlessly overhead. Before he or Mary even had time to move, the Great Ram’s body became half obscured by black smoke. Rooted to the spot, Mary guessed what was about to happen. Within seconds the smoke solidified into the Black Imp.
Wash gave a terrified bellow, ‘No! No; no!’ and turned to run. But in two bounds the infernal creature was upon him. It seemed to dissolve again and, paralysed by horror, Mary saw it streak into his wide open mouth. Next moment he dropped his gun and reeled forward, clutching at his stomach. Wisps of smoke were coming from his nostrils and his ears. His near-white hair was standing straight up on his head; his eyes, suffused with blood, were protruding as though on stalks. He was on fire inside. He emitted one long-drawn scream that ended in a gurgle, then crashed face downwards on the floor.
As he fell his right arm swung out and its fist, tight-clenched in the agony of death, struck Mary sharply on the thigh. The blow caused her to stagger, so jolting her out of the paralysis that had held her rigid with horror. Letting out a piercing shriek she turned and fled.
For the next few moments she had no clear impressions. As though she had been transported by wings she found herself at the far entrance of the cave, brought up short in her flight by the edge of the rock platform. Her first conscious thoughts were that the Great Ram had triumphed and that the sands of her own life were swiftly running out.
A shout from below caught her attention. Looking down she saw four of the teams of climbers all scaling the mountain by different routes; but the nearest was a good three hundred feet below the level of the cave. Still gasping for breath she shouted back. But her cry was one of despair, for the teams were moving upward only at a crawl, and she knew that they could not possibly arrive in time to save her – unless, unless she could find somewhere to hide.
As she looked down she saw that about eight feet below the platform on which she stood there was another ledge. If she could reach it and crouch back against the rock face beneath the overhang she might conceal herself there while the Great Ram, failing to find her at the entrance to the cave, supposed that she was hiding in one of the cabins. By the time he had searched them all there was at least a chance that help might reach her.
Two of the stanchions that supported the terminus of the cable railway were embedded in the lower ledge. Running along to the platform, she threw herself flat upon it, then wriggled backwards until her legs were dangling in space. A few wild kicks and they closed round the stanchion. There followed an awful moment as she lowered herself until she could also grip it with her hands. The ice-cold metal bit into them with savage heat. She gave a gasp of pain, released her hold and slid the last few feet to fall with a bump in the snow. Tears were now streaming down her face but, picking herself up, she scrambled along to the deepest indenture in the cliff wall and crouched down there.
Yet her final bid to outwit the Great Ram was doomed to failure. He had followed her wild flight at only walking pace, but as soon as he reached the rock platform his intuition told him where she was. She had not been crouching beneath the overhang for much more than a minute when she heard him call to her from above to come out.
She tried to crouch further back against the rock, but it was no good. Despite her efforts to remain where she was she found herself standing up and walking forward. The ledge was about ten feet wide. When she had covered half the distance he ordered her to stop, turn round and look up at him. Unresisting now, she did as she was bid.
Tall, dark, saturnine, he stood right on the edge of the big platform looking down at her, his thin mouth curved in a smile. To her amazement his expression was no longer harsh or cynical, but, for the first time she had seen it on his face, a kindly one. And when he spoke his voice was gentle.
‘Circe, sometime neophyte of the Ram, I did you an injustice. Although it was impossible for you to defeat me, you have proved a more worthy opponent than I supposed any woman could. It is a tragedy that you should have chosen to adhere to the Christian heresy; otherwise you might have shared with me in ten minutes’ time the triumph for which I have worked so long. Had we met earlier I would have converted you to the true faith, and done you the honour to allow you to serve me both as a woman and a friend. As it is, in recognition of your courage, I will accord you mercy. Instead of inflicting my curse upon you, or sending my dark inner self to consume you in agony, as I did with the stupid giant you made your tool, I decree for you a swift and painless death. Turn about now and walk forward to the end decreed for you.’
Before Mary had grasped the full significance of his words, she found that she had turned round. An intangible but irresistible force pressed upon her back. She strove to keep her legs rigid and her feet planted firmly, but the pressure against her shoulders increased, bending her forward. To keep her balance she was compelled to put out first one foot and then the other. Two more steps and she was on the edge of the ledge. Immediately below her was a nearly sheer drop of a thousand feet.
In front of her the snow-capped peaks of the range on the other side of the valley glistened in the sunshine. Owing to the clear, rarefied atmosphere they looked so near that she could almost have stepped across to them, but actually they were miles away. Above them puffs of white cloud hung unmoving in a blue summer sky. Her eyes dropped to the green valley, with its toy tanks and tiny figures on the far side of the narrow, rushing stream. Then, much nearer, there were the teams of climbers. They had all halted and some men among them had rifles to their shoulders. One flashed. It was only then her brain registered the fact that they had been firing for some minutes.
Suddenly she realised that they were firing at the Great Ram. A final hope stirred in her. If he were hit she would be reprieved from death. Frantically now she dug her heels into the hard snow and used every ounce of strength she had to throw herself backward. But her effort was useless. All she could achieve was to remain upright, and deep down in herself she knew that the Great Ram would not be hit. The magic aura with which he could surround himself would deflect the bullets.
Still she battled to maintain her balance, pitting her will against his. But his was the stronger. Her head bowed under the pressure so that she was staring down into the abyss. Then, like an officer giving the order to a firing squad to shoot, she heard him call down to her the one word, ‘Jump.’
She flexed her knees, swayed sideways, threw up her arms, and with a wild cry fell outward into space.
. . . . .
Immediately after receiving the radio message about Lothar’s broadcast Verney asked the Lieutenant leading his party to circulate to all the other climbing teams an urgent signal. So far the troops had been told only that they were on an emergency operation and must get up to the cave for the purpose of arresting with the least possible delay anyone they found in it. Now they were told that in the cave there was a madman who had stolen an H-bomb, and that he planned to let it off at midday. They were then called on to take risks if necessary and make an all-out effort to reach the cave in time. Verney also took it on himself to promise quadruple pensions for the dependants of men who might be injured or killed in the attempt, and rich rewards and honours for the first three teams to reach the cave. They were told, too, that although other teams were on the way to the far entrance of the cave, these had had to make a wide detour before starting their climb, so there was no chance of their reaching the goal first. In consequence, success or failure depended on teams that had set out on the direct route up from the wrecked engine-house.
There was no more that he could do; yet within the next few minutes it was apparent that the message had galvanised the troops into considerably swifter progress, and his own party resumed the climb at a faster pace.
As the officer or N.C.O. leading each party carried a walkie-talkie set the Sergeant with Barney’s team had received the radio message relayed from Berne at the same time as his Lieutenant. The moment Barney heard of it he too realised that only a superhuman effort could enable them to reach the cave before midday, and without waiting for C.B.’s message he urged his party to greater speed.
For the amateurs the pace on the easier stretches became grinding; yet the harder ones caused them more distress from their very slowness on them, and the time it took to cut steps in the ice or plough through patches of soft snow. Many times they slipped and would, perhaps, have fallen to their deaths had it not been for the strong sure-footed Alpine troops to whom they were roped before and behind.
At times Barney almost despaired of reaching the cave at all. Every hundred feet or so his party found itself confronted with a great mass of overhanging rock, round which a way had to be worked, or a narrow, almost vertical chimney that had to be climbed as the only means of continuing the ascent. In one case they had to cross a glacier and, in another, edge their way along thirty feet of ledge that was In no place more than eighteen inches wide. Not daring to look down, he kept his eyes fixed on the man in front of him, endeavouring to follow his footsteps exactly, but a dozen times his heart was in his mouth and he feared that at any moment he would fall headlong over the precipice.
As they made their way upwards he lost all sense of time until, on coming out from beneath an overhang, he caught sight of the opening of the cave about three hundred feet above him. A quick glance at his watch showed that it was half past eleven. They had, he knew, performed marvels in the past hour, but to scale that last three hundred feet of snow and ice in less than the remaining thirty minutes seemed beyond even the greatest human endeavour.
For a further quarter of an hour, sweating and straining, they toiled on. Then he heard a shout. It came from a member of another party some way to the left of his. The shout was quickly answered by another from higher up. Looking upward, he saw that a woman had emerged from the cave. A moment later he recognised her as Mary. His relief at knowing her still to be alive was so great that, although he waved, for a moment he could not utter a sound. Tears started to his eyes and he was choking with emotion.
Within a few minutes all the men in the climbing teams who were in sight of the cave were staring up at her in wonder, as they saw her turn to the cable-railway platform then risk a fall to death by wriggling out over its edge and supporting herself only by a precarious hold on one of its girders.
As she slid to the ledge and picked herself up, Barney let his breath go in a gasp of relief. Finding his voice he urged his team to still greater efforts, but they had covered no more than a dozen paces when Lothar appeared on the upper platform. Verney and Barney both recognised him and almost simultaneously shouted:
‘There he is! Shoot him! Shoot! Shoot!’
Some of the troops were armed with Sten guns and others with pistols. Only a few carried rifles, but those who did swiftly unslung them and opened fire. None of their bullets appeared to score a hit and in the next two minutes all the climbers who could see the cave watched with horror as Mary’s tragedy was played out.
Verney, Otto and Barney alone among them fully understood what was taking place. But the others realised instinctively that the tall, dark man on the upper ledge was ordering the woman on the lower to throw herself over the precipice.
Barney drew the pistol he had been lent and aimed it at Lothar, then lowered his arm. At that range even rifles were proving ineffective, and a pistol bullet might as easily have hit Mary as the man who was driving her to her death. He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again Mary had thrown herself sideways and was hurtling into the abyss.
. . . . .
The parties had started upward again. The rifles had ceased to crack. Lothar had disappeared unharmed into the cave. Barney was climbing now as an automaton. Grief and pain filled his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Instinctively he continued to place his feet in the footsteps of the man ahead and to advance or halt as he was told.
That he should have been robbed of Mary at the eleventh hour caused him a sick misery the like of which he had never before known in all his life. During the past unbearably anxious days he had come to realise that she meant everything to him; that no other woman could ever compensate him for the loss. Almost he had resigned himself to it, believing it next to impossible that the Great Ram would allow her to live after she had thrown the crucifix in his face. Yet he had. Only a few minutes ago she had still been alive, and unharmed. Now she was dead, a broken twisted body grotesquely doubled across some spur of rock, or buried deep in snow, far down below.
The Sergeant rounded a shoulder of the mountain that brought the cable railway again into full view. Suddenly he gave a shout:
‘There she is! Blessed God, a miracle!’
The others clambered round the corner after him. He had come out on a humpy ledge of rock broad enough for all his team to stand on. Opposite to them and about ten feet away sagged one of the long swags of triple cable along which the cage of the railway ran. Twenty feet lower down there stood one of the tall T-shaped steel pylons that supported the cables. At the base of the pylon, where snow had piled up, Mary was lying on her stomach clinging with one arm to the nearest steel strut.
Her sideways lurch as she fell had temorarily saved her. Instead of plunging to the depths she had shot forward beneath the railway terminus platform, hit one of its outer stanchions, checked, slid, bounced, rolled and finally brought up on the drift of snow that had accumulated against the first great pylon some eighty feet below the level of the cave.
‘Mary! Mary!’ Barney’s voice cracked as he shouted down to her. ‘Hang on! Can you hang on? Are you all right?’
She squirmed round and her feeble cry came back, ‘I’ve a broken arm. Ribs too I think. But go on up. Twelve o’clock! Twelve o’clock!’
Barney did not need to look at his watch. From the time that had elapsed since he had seen her fall he knew that it could now be only a few minutes to noon. To complete their climb in the tiny fraction of an hour that was left was beyond the bounds of possibility. And the other teams were no nearer to the cave then his.
The Great Ram had won. He would launch his accursed rocket and bring incalculable death and suffering on the world. But for some time at least the mountain areas of Switzerland would remain unaffected. And Mary was lying there still within a hair’s breadth of death. To save her was now the highest priority.
Turning to the Sergeant, Barney cried, ‘How can we get her up? What’s the drill?’
The Sergeant shook his head. ‘We can do nothing from here. We must first complete our climb to the cave. From there one of us can be lowered to get a rope round her.’
‘But that will take half an hour, longer perhaps,’ Barney burst out. ‘At any moment the slope of snow on which she’s lying may collapse. Anyhow, it’s freezing and one of her arms is broken. She’ll never be able to hang on that long.’
‘There is no other way.’ The Sergeant pointed. ‘Look for yourself, Sir. We can get down to her only from above. Even if we threw her a rope and she could catch and make herself fast to it, that would not help. If the snow gives or she lets go her hold on the pylon, she would swing out and be dashed to death against the cliff face below us.’
‘There is a way,’ Barney retorted. ‘Quick, give me an extra rope, and lengthen the one attached to me. I’m going to jump to the cable, shin along it to the pylon, and go down to her.’
A chorus of protest arose from the five soldiers. They declared that he was mad - that it would be suicide - that the jump was too far for him to catch the cable – that if he missed it the rope could not save him as he, in that case, would be dashed to death as he swung violently against the rock face.
His Irish temper flaming at their opposition, he shouted them down, then bullied them into reluctantly equipping him with ropes in the way he had demanded. Eyeing him with mixed amazement, admiration and distress, they stood back to give him the best run that the ledge afforded. At that moment a single shot rang out, but none of them heeded it. Drawing a deep breath, he took his run and launched himself across the gaping chasm.
He hit the nearest cable with his body. His hands were held open and stretched high above his head. The cable gave under the impact. As it snapped back like a twanged bowstring his body doubled across it, his head went down and he was within an ace of somersaulting over it to his death. But he managed to grab it with his gloved hands and, next moment, was hanging by them from it.
The Sergeant and his men let out a spontaneous cheer, then watched spellbound as he made his way foot by foot along the now sagging cable, expecting every moment that the weight of his body would prove too much for his arms, and that he would drop like a stone into the depths above which he was swinging.
The strain on his arms was terrible. He felt as though they were being dragged from their sockets. But he reached the T-shaped head of the pylon. As he grasped it and clung there panting another cheer went up. For a moment he remained there to recover his breath. Then he scrambled down the steel latticework of which the pylon was constructed.
Mary, half lying on her side, had been holding her breath as she watched him. When he got down to within a few feet of her she breathed again, and murmured, ‘Oh Barney, Barney! Just to think you’ve risked your life for me – even though you despise me.’
‘Despise you!’ he echoed. ‘Oh Mary, Mary, how can you say that? I love you. I love you. And you risked a worse death than a broken neck when you saved me from the Great Ram in the chapel.’
As he was speaking he passed the loop of the spare rope over her head. With a moan of pain she raised her broken arm and got it through the loop. He drew it tight and made it fast to a strut of the pylon. Then he made his own rope fast to another strut and lowered himself on to the snow beside her.
A shiver shook her and she moaned, ‘I’m so cold, darling; so cold. I couldn’t have hung on for another five minutes.’ Yet despite her pain she was smiling.
Even if the snow gave the ropes would hold them now. Taking her in his arms, he said, ‘They’ll get us up soon, my sweet, and I’ll never let you be cold or lonely again.’ Then their icy breath mingled as their lips met in a long kiss.
. . . . .
It was nearly half past twelve before Mary was hauled up to the platform outside the cave, now crowded with the Alpine troops. Yet the rocket had not been fired. As they wrapped her in blankets and laid her gently on a readymade stretcher, C.B. knelt down beside her, took her hands and chafed them. In a husky voice he said, ‘Mary, my dear; I’ve known a lot of brave women but you are the bravest of them all. Thank God we arrived in time to save you; and may He bless you all your days.’
Her eyes were shining. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you. But He’s blessed me already. Barney has asked me to marry him.’
‘I’d have bet any money that he would,’ C.B. smiled. ‘It remains only for me to ask His Lordship if he’ll have me for best man at the wedding.’
She frowned. ‘Please don’t joke about it. His calling himself Lord Larne was just a part of his phoney Character for the job.’
Verney shook his head. ‘You’re off the mark there, my dear. He became the Earl of Larne five years ago; but when he came into the title he made a complete break with his old life and decided not to use it in the new one until he had lived down his raffish past. You’ll make the loveliest Countess of Larne they’ve ever had in the family.’
At that moment Barney was hauled up over the edge. After smiling at Mary he turned quickly to C.B. and asked, ‘What happened? Did something go wrong with the rocket when Lothar tried to launch it, or was he hit by that single shot I heard just before midday?’
Verney came to his feet. ‘Neither, partner. That shot was fired by Otto from a pistol lent him by the Swiss. He realised that we couldn’t get up here in time and shot himself through the heart.’
‘D’you mean he committed suicide in despair?’
‘Not in despair. He died a hero’s death. I’m sure of it. When the first troops got here they found Lothar lying flat on his face. As he wasn’t bleeding they thought he’d had a stroke and undid his tunic. Over his heart there was a great black bruise, as though he’d been kicked there by a mule. Otto knew better than any of us the way in which what happened to one twin could affect the other. By shooting himself he killed his brother with a heart attack.’
After a moment, C.B. added, ‘Although there was no thunderbolt or stroke of lightning, I shall always believe that at the eleventh hour, through Otto Khune, God intervened to defeat the powers of Evil.’