Setting the chalice down, he took from one of his assistants a small metal box that appeared to contain soot, and dipping his finger in it began to draw black symbols on each of Christina's limbs. As he did so he chanted unintelligible words in a high, excited voice. The sweat was now pouring down his flabby face and, as he proceeded with this new ritual, a frenzy seized upon his congregation, causing them to give vent to hideous animal noises and those who were free to do so pulled up their robes, exposing themselves.
With distended eyes John stared at the frightful spectacle being enacted before him. Already he had become vaguely conscious that some of the faces about him were familiar. Suddenly he realised where he had seen them before. Ten of them were those of the party who had flown out with him from Northolt that morning. Before leaving England the previous afternoon the Canon must have sent an S O S to ten of the leading Satanists of Britain to join him in Nice for the ceremony. The mention of a wedding he had overheard must have been a covert reference to the spiritual union of Christina with the homunculus. He could only guess that the two others, making up the coven of thirteen, were French Satanists who had selected the Cave of the Bats as an appropriate setting for this unholy marriage.
John's distraught glance switched to the homunculus. He had been given a description of it by C. B., but had never seen it. The big glass jar that contained it had been placed by the left hand end of a low altar, hewn from the living rock, at the far end of the small chamber. In the jar the squat, repulsive travesty of a female figure undulated gently, its arms and legs moving with the same apparent aimlessness as the tentacles of an octopus. Slowly the red rimmed eyes swivelled from side to side, while the mouth opened and shut with a fish like motion. As John gazed at it his flesh began to creep, and he felt that for sheer unadulterated filthiness the reality utterly beggared the description.
Suddenly the ritual of the symbols ended. The acolytes threw themselves on Christina, hauled her, now only half conscious, from the altar and stood her upright. One of the women near her produced a sack like robe with strange designs upon it. The garment was thrown over her and her arms were then pulled through slits in its sides. Another of the witches put a pointed fool's cap on her head and tied it there by a ribbon beneath her chin. Into John's mind came a picture of heretics on their way to the stake, to be burnt at the order of the Spanish Inquisition. The costume was evidently designed with the same intent, but had the symbols of the Devil instead of those of Christ figured upon it. A third witch tied Christina's hands in front of her with a strip from her torn dress. Next moment the three of them had flung her down again on her back along the altar. Her head now rested on the top of the jar that held the homunculus. The black haired witch removed its big round stopper. Sick with horror, John closed his eyes and again strove to pray.
When he opened them the Canon had begun another incantation. In a frenzy of excitement he mouthed and postured, while the witches held Christina down. The congregation screamed responses. Beddows shouted and cursed, and strove to break away; but he could not get up from his knees or shake off the men who held him. The Canon drew a long curved knife from his girdle and waved it aloft. Breaking into English he shrieked in a high falsetto
`The hour has come! The great hour has come! I, Augustus Copely Syle, Prince of the Bats and High Priest of the Lord Satan, by this act give a soul to my creation.'
`Stop!' John's yell cut through the hideous din. `Stop, I say! Your ceremony is useless. She is no longer a virgin! I took her virginity that night we were together on the Ile de Port Cros.'
A sudden deathly silence descended on the vaulted chamber. The Canon swung upon him, his face livid with ungovernable fury.
`It is not true!' he gasped. `It cannot be true.'
`It is! I swear it!' cried John desperately.
Copely Syle's eyes bulged, and he groaned. For a moment he remained silent and motionless, then he muttered, `Oh, I feared it! I feared it from the moment I saw you with her in the Casino!'
Again, for the space of a dozen heart beats, he stood glaring but seemingly paralyzed. It was Beddows who broke the spell by suddenly emitting a harsh, unnatural laugh.
It seemed to electrify the Canon. With blazing eyes he leapt towards John, brandishing the knife on high and screaming, `My life work is ruined. I will cut out your heart. I will cut out your heart!'
The knife cleaved the air with a swish. It was aimed at John's neck above the collar bone. Another second and it would have cleaved his jugular vein. Of the two men holding him on his knees one was the tall, gaunt faced individual who had come from Scotland. At the penultimate instant he struck the blade aside and cried
`No, Prince of the Bats, no! You cannot sully the sacred knife dedicated to the sacrifice of offerings on the altar. Do your will upon him, but not in blind anger. We are not here to witness common murder. I demand that he be sacrificed in due form, so that his blood may mingle with hers and the altar be deprived of neither.'
`Yes! Yes!' chorused the others, and the squint eyed witch who had also come from Scotland screamed above the rest, `But the woman first. She is ready for you, and we are waiting.'
Slowly Copely Syle turned about. His anger seemed suddenly to have drained from him, and he muttered to himself, `The incantation may yet work. It is her birth hour and she is twenty one.'
Again he approached the altar, and this time raised his knife with quiet deliberation. John felt as if his heart was about to burst from impotence and distress. For a moment hope had sprung wildly in his breast, but now he knew that final defeat was rushing upon him. Only seconds of life remained to Christina.
Suddenly, on an unbidden impulse, he found himself shouting with all the power of his lungs, `Christina, darling! I love you! I love you!'
As his voice rang through the chamber Christina's whole body tensed. With a violent jerk her wrists snapped the strip of fabric that bound them. From the impetus, her freed hands were flung out and backward. At the end of its swing her deft hand struck the jar that contained the homunculus. John's ring hit it with a loud clang. The inch thick glass shivered and broke as though it had been paper thin crystal. As the jar fell to pieces the liquid in it gushed out. For a moment the naked and obscene homunculus stood among the falling fragments; then she leapt straight at the Canon.
With a piercing shriek he staggered back under the impact. Her taloned hands dug into his shoulders; her claw like feet fixed themselves in his legs above the knees. For a few seconds her slimy, dripping face was pressed against his in an awful mockery of a kiss; then, her eyes goggling with her hunger for blood, she lowered it and fixed her teeth fiercely in his neck.
The rushing water from the jar swirled against the low brazier. The coals in it hissed and dulled, reducing the glow of light in the chamber to a glimmer. Pandemonium broke loose. Screaming, the Canon fell to the floor with the homunculus on top of him. Two of the men holding Beddows and John left them to run to his aid. By violent efforts both succeeded in throwing the others off. Beddows groped for his knuckle duster and pulled it from his pocket. John whipped out his knife. Savagely and indiscriminately they laid about them. Shrieks and curses told how their weapons were finding their marks.
Rushing forward, Beddows kicked over the brazier. The remainder of the live coals hissed in the water and swiftly dulled. Near darkness engulfed the awful mere. Beddows shouted to John
`Get the girl out! I'll keep these bastards busy.'
John had already reached Christina and pulled her to her feet. The squint eyed witch barred their path. Without hesitation John knifed her in the breast. With a filthy imprecation she clutched at the wound and staggered sideways. Jumping the still hissing coals, John and Christina dashed towards the doorway. As they did so, by the dying light they glimpsed the tall bony faced man charging at them. Evading his clutch by inches they gained the passage and sped down it.
Before they were half way to the foot of the slope John knew that Christina's strength was failing. With one h
and he had thrust his knife into his pocket and pulled out his torch, so that he could light the way ahead of them the other he had round her waist and, as they ran on, he could feel her flagging. From behind them came the sounds of pounding feet, telling that they were very far from being out of danger. A veritable madness had seized upon the remaining Satanists, and those not occupied in endeavouring to overcome Beddows were in full pursuit, headed by the lean man from Scotland.
Gasping and reeling, the flying couple reached the slope, but after a few steps up it Christina staggered and fell. This last effort after her terrible ordeal had proved too much for her; she had fainted. She was nearly as tall as John, yet, temporarily granted superhuman strength, he pulled her arm across the 'back of his neck, heaved her up in a fireman's lift across his shoulders and continued the steep ascent.
Bent nearly double, he lurched a dozen steps; then he knew that he could never make it. He had still a hundred and twenty feet of slope to mount, and at its top he would have to get her up the twenty foot long rope ladder. Even a Hercules could not accomplish such a feat in time to escape the fiends who were now coming up the slope behind him, howling for vengeance.
Then for a moment he was given fresh hope by hearing Beddows' voice mingled with the rest, shouting, `Go on, John! Stick to it! I'll stop them following!'
That cheering sound told him that Beddows had either dealt with, or escaped from, the Satanists remaining in the temple, and was now attacking the others at the bottom of the slope.. It meant a brief respite and he did his utmost to make the best of it. Holding his torch in one hand and grasping Christina's wrist with the other, he dragged his feet yard by yard upward. Yet he was barely half way to the top when he fell to his knees, weighed down by Christina's limp body, and mentally crushed by the knowledge that he was at the end of his tether. In vain he tried to rise. He could not. He could only pray, and mutter over and over again
`Oh Lord, help us ! Oh Lord, help us!'
And then indeed help came. There was the sound of slithering footsteps above him, and the light of torches shone in his eyes. Echoing back from the stone walls C.B.’s voice reached him:
`John! John! Thank God we are in time!'
Willing hands lifted Christina off him. Still gasping for breath he staggered up the last half of the awful slope. At its top, C. B. and another man got Christina up the ladder. A third helped him to climb it.
Half dazed, he stepped out into the moonlight. His mother was there and flung her arms about him. Beside C. B. stood old Malouet, and with them were several gendarmes. It was they who carried Christina to one of the stretchers and covered her sacking garment with warm cloaks.
John was still standing on the edge of the hole when he again caught the clamour of the surviving Satanists. They had reached the platform immediately below the opening. Molly and C. B. ran to it. The latter shone his torch downwards. It lit a group of wild upturned faces. That of Beddows was among them. It was covered with blood, but he was still striking out at the nearest of the enemy. In the darkness and confusion they had failed to identify and overcome him.
What John took to be a stone fell into their midst. Next second there came a blinding flash of light and a shattering explosion. C. B. swore and pulled Molly back. Two of the gendarmes came running up to ask what had happened. No one could say. It could only be assumed that one of the Satanists had been carrying a package of explosives, and a blow upon it during the melee had set it off. When C. B. shone his torch down the hole again it revealed a tangle of dead and dying men and women.
Leaving all but two of the police, who had already picked up the stretcher on which Christina lay, to perform such rescue work as might still be possible, the others set off down the hill. When John had recovered a little he asked C. B.
`How did you manage to come on the scene like this and save us at the very last moment?'
`It was your mother, my boy,' C. B. replied. `She is a woman in a million.'
`Nonsense!' cut in Molly, who was walking just ahead of them. `I did no more than use my common sense. Your having promised Count Jules that you would not communicate with the police was not binding on me.'
`No,' said John slowly. `I suppose not. But how on earth did you manage to do it?'
`I didn't go into the inn for the reason you thought I did. It was to write a brief message. I gave it with a five hundred franc note to the woman I found behind the bar, in exchange for a promise that she would telephone it at once to Inspector Drouet. I knew that would bring our friends to St. Michael as soon as they received it. But I thought I ought to make certain of being able to find you as well; so I went up to the top of the hill with you, then threw a weak woman act as soon as the smugglers had pointed out the entrance to the cave. Immediately you were out of sight I hurried back to the inn, so that when the police arrived there I was able to lead them straight up to it.'
`Bless you, Mumsie; you really are a wonder.' John laughed. `And if it is true that you are not still on the secret list as Molly Polloffski the beautiful spy, that's a great loss to the nation.'
The arrival of the police at the inn an hour before had resulted in the good woman who ran it keeping it open a little later than usual, and it was still not eleven o'clock when the stretcher party arrived there. In the public room a warm fire was glowing in the stove, and Christina, now fully conscious again, was made comfortable in borrowed wraps beside it. C. B. ordered coffee laced with cognac for them all to warm them up, and when John carried two cups over to the corner where Christina was sitting the others discreetly took theirs to the far end of the room.
When John had settled himself beside Christina, he told her how Jules had enabled him to trace her to the Cave of the Bats, and how his mother's quick wits had brought the police on the scene in time to save them; but she smilingly shook her head.
`It was clever of you to think of making use of Jules, and wonderful of your mother to think of a way of getting help to us; but your first attempt to rescue me failed, and the police would have arrived too late if it hadn't been for your eleventh hour inspiration.'
`What do you mean by that?' he asked with a puzzled look.
`Why, that frightful lie you told about my no longer being a virgin.'
`By Jove!' he grinned. `D'you know, I'd already forgotten about that. It was a whopper, wasn't it? What's more I swore it, and that is perjury, or something. Do you think I'll be forgiven?'
`I'm sure you will. It must have gained us the best part of five minutes, and so saved my life. But that is not all. It was your ring that really saved us both.'
`Yes. There must have been some blessed magic in it for a single tap from it to have shattered that thick glass. Would you like to keep it?'
`Do you want me to?'
He hesitated, then asked, `Do you know that your father is dead?'
`No,' she replied calmly. `I was absolutely staggered to see him there. How did he come to be with you?'
`That is a long story, and I'll tell it to you to morrow. For the present it is enough to say that just after we got out of the cave there was an explosion and I saw him with his head half ... well, so badly injured that he couldn't possibly recover.'
`Poor Father,' she sighed. `It is sad to hear that; but he never loved me or I him; and you haven't told me yet how you induced him to come in with you.'
`Up to last night he was a Satanist himself. He sold you to the Devil when you were a baby. That was what made you so unlike your real self during the hours of darkness. But last night he repented and released you.'
`That would explain, then, why I felt so different soon after I was taken out of the prison, and again this evening after sunset.'
`Yes. He abjured Satan and all his works on your behalf; then he came back here with us to help to try to rescue you. But he is dead now. I am certain of it, and I have a reason for telling you so at once, instead of waiting until later.
Before he died he had no chance to alter his will; so nobody can yet know how he
has left his money.'
`I don't quite see what you are driving at,' she murmured.
`Simply that I would like to ask you to marry me before it is known whether you are a great heiress or a pauper.'
`Oh John,' she smiled. `What has money got to do with it? Only one thing matters. Did you really mean it or not when, just before I snapped the stuff that bound my wrists and smashed the jar with your ring, you called out to me, “Darling, I love you! I love you! ”?'
`Of course I did.'
Her big brown eyes shone with happiness as she leaned towards him and whispered, `Then your own words are my answer.'
Inspector Drouet joined the party at the inn about half an hour later, and he confirmed that Henry Beddows was among the dead who had been recovered from the cave. As Christina was still technically under arrest he discussed her position with Malouet, then agreed to her provisional release on the ex inspector's stating that he would go surety for her.
Very tired now, John, Christina and C. B. went out to Molly's car, and it was she who drove them home. When they arrived at the villa it was after one o'clock, and John and Christina went straight up to their rooms; but C. B. asked Molly for a night cap.
Knowing his preference, she mixed him a whisky and soda; then made one for herself. He raised his glass, said, `Chin, chin!', then added in his most conspiratorial voice
`Can you tell me, Mrs. Fountain, any good and sufficient reason why I should not hand you over to the police on a charge of having committed mass murder?'
She suppressed a start, then asked with a bland smile, `What are you talking about, C. B.? I'm afraid all this excitement has proved a little too much for even you.'
`No, Molly,' he said seriously. `You can't laugh this thing off. I saw you drop that Mills bomb on to the heads of those wretched people.'
`Did you?' She smiled archly. `Well, I don't mind if you did. They were all horrors and menaces to everything decent in life. It is a good thing they are dead. Perhaps it was a pity about Beddows; but I'm not even certain about that, since he had lived as a Satanist all his adult life. And it ... er . . . did the job perfectly, didn't it?'
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