Straining their eyes they peered into the great apartment upon which it opened. A hundred feet long at least and thirty wide, it stretched out before them. Two lines of thick pillars, acting as supports to the roof above, and rows of chairs divided in the centre by an aisle which led up to a distant altar, gave it the appearance of a big private chapel. It was lit by one solitary lamp which hung suspended before the altar, and that distant beacon did not penetrate to the shadows in which they stood.
On tiptoe and with their weapons ready they moved forward along the wall. De Richleau peered from side to side as he advanced, his pistol levelled. Rex crept along beside him, the iron winch lever which they had used to smash the padlock gripped tight in his big fist. At any moment they expected their presence to be discovered.
As they crept nearer to the hanging lamp, they saw that the place had been furnished with the utmost luxury and elegance for the unholy meetings. It was, indeed, a superbly equipped temple for the worship of the Devil. Above the altar a great and horrible presentation of the Goat of Mendes, worked in the loveliest coloured silks, leered down at them; its eyes were two red stones which had been inset in the tapestry. They flickered with dull malevolence in the dim light of the solitary lamp.
On the side walls were pictures of men, women and beasts practising obscenities only possible of conception in the brain of a mad artist. Below the enormous central figure, which had hideous, distorted, human faces protruding from its elbows, knees and belly, was a great altar of glistening red stone, worked and inlaid with other coloured metals in the Italian fashion. Upon it reposed the ancient ‘devil’s bibles’ containing all the liturgies of hell; broken crucifixes and desecrated chalices stolen from churches and profaned here at the meetings of the Satanists.
Luxurious armchairs upholstered in red velvet and gold with elaborate canopies of lace above, such as High Prelates use in cathedrals when assisting at important ceremonies, flanked the altar on either side. Below the steps to the short chancel, on a level with where they stood, were arranged rows and rows of cushioned prie-dieu for the accommodation of the worshippers.
No sound of movement disturbed the stillness of the heavy incense-laden air and with a sinking of the heart De Richleau knew that they had lost their man. He had gambled blindly upon Tanith’s message and she had proved wrong as to time. Mocata might not be in Paris for days to come; perhaps he had divined their journey and, knowing that he would be unmolested while they were abroad, returned to Simon’s house where, even now, he might be foully murdering little Fleur. It seemed that their last hope had gone.
Then, as they stepped from the side aisle they suddenly saw a thing that had been hidden from them by the rows of chair backsa body, clad in a long white robe with mystic signs embroidered on it in black and red, lay spread-eagled, face downwards on the floor, at the bottom of the chancel steps.
‘It’s Simon!’ breathed the Duke.
‘Oh, hell, they’ve killed him!’ Rex ran forward and knelt beside the body of their friend. They turned him over and felt his heart. It was beating slowly but rhythmically. The Duke pulled out of his waistcoat pocket a little bottle, without which he never travelled, and held it beneath Simon’s nose. He shuddered suddenly and his eyes opened, staring up at them.
‘Simon, darling, Simon. It’s uswe’re here.’ Marie Lou grasped his limp hands between her own.
He shuddered again and struggled into a sitting position.
‘Whatwhat’s happened?’ he murmured, but his voice was normal.
‘You left us, you dear, pig-headed ass!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘Gave yourself up and ruined our whole plan of campaign. What’s happened to you? That’s what we want to know.’
‘Well, I met him.’ Simon gave the ghost of a smile. ‘And he took me to Paris in his plane. Then to some place down on the riverside.’ He gazed round and added quickly: ‘But this is it. How did you get here?’
‘Never mind that,’ De Richleau urged him. ‘Have you seen Fleur?’
‘Yes. He sent a car for me, and when I reached the plane she was already in it. We had an argument and he swore he’d keep his word unless I went through with this.’ ‘The ritual to Saturn?’ asked De Richleau. ‘Um. He said that if I’d do it without making any fuss he’d let me take Fleur out of here immediately afterwards and back to England.’
‘He’s double-crossed you, as we thought he would,’ Rex grunted. ‘There’s not a soul in this place. He’s quit, and taken Fleur with him. Can’t you say where he’ll be likely to make for?’ ‘Ner.’ Simon shook his head. ‘Directly we started on the ritual he put me under. I let him, but of course he would have done that anyway. The last I saw of Fleur she was sound asleep in that armchair and the next thing I knew you were all staring down at me just now.’
‘If you completed the ritual, Mocata knows now where the Talisman is,’ De Richleau said abruptly. ‘Yes,’ Simon nodded.
‘Then he will have gone to wherever it isfrom here.’ ‘Of course,’ Richard cut in. ‘That’s his main objective. He wouldn’t lose a second.’
‘Then Simon must know the place to which he’s gone.’ ‘How’s that? I don’t quite get you.’ Rex looked at the Duke with a puzzled frown.
‘In his subconscious, I mean. Our only hope now is for me to put Simon under again and make him repeat every word that he said when the ritual was performed. That will give us the hiding-place of the Talisman and the place to which I’ll stake my life Mocata is heading at the present moment. Are you game, Simon?’
‘Yes, of course. You know that I would do anything to help.’
‘Right.’ The Duke took him by the arm and pushed him gently. ‘Sit down in that chair to the right of the altar and we’ll go ahead.’
Simon settled himself and leaned back on the comfortable cushions, his white robe with its esoteric designs in black and red settling about his feet like the long skirts of a woman. De Richleau made a few swift passes. ‘Sleep, Simon,’ he commanded.
Simon’s eyelids trembled and closed. After a moment he began to breathe deeply and regularly. The Duke went on: ‘You are in this temple with Mocata. The ritual to Saturn is about to begin. Repeat the words that he made you speak then.’
Dreamily but easily, Simon spoke the words of power which were utterly meaningless to Richard, Rex and Marie Lou, who stood, a tensely anxious audience, at the bottom of the chancel steps.
‘On,’ commanded De Richleau. ‘Jump a quarter of an hour.’ Simon spoke again, more sentences incomprehensible to the uninitiate.
‘On again,’ commanded De Richleau. ‘Another quarter of an hour has passed.’
‘… was built above the place where the Talisman is buried,’ said Simon. ‘It will be found in the earth beneath the right-hand stone of the altar.’
‘Go back one minute,’ ordered De Richleau, and Simon spoke once more.
‘… Attila’s death the Greek secreted it and took it to his own country. In the city of Yanina, upon his return, he became possessed of devils and was handed over to the brethren at the monastery above Metsovo, which stands in the mountains twenty miles east of the city. They failed to cast out the spirits which inhabited his body and so imprisoned him in an underground cell and there, before he died, he buried the Talisman. Seven years later the dungeons were demolished and the crypt built in their place on the same site, with the great church above it. The Talisman remained undisturbed in its original hiding-place. Its power gradually pervaded the whole of the Brotherhood, filling it with lechery and greed, so that it disintegrated and was finally disbanded before the invasion by the Turks. The chapel to the left in the crypt was built above the place where the Talisman is buried.’
‘Stop,’ ordered the Duke. ‘Awake now.’
‘By Jove, we’ve got it!’ exclaimed Rex. But as he spoke a slight noise behind them made him swing upon his heel.
Four figures stood there in the shadows. The tallest suddenly stepped forward.
Richard’s hand leapt to his gun
but the tall man snapped: ‘Stand still, mon vieux, I have you covered,’ and they saw that he held an automatic.
The other two strangers came forward. The fourth was Castelnau.
The leader of the party turned to a little old man, who stood beside him wearing an out-of-date bowler hat that came almost down to his ears, then nodded towards the Duke.
‘Is that De Richleau, Verrier? You should be able to recognise him, since he was in your time.’
‘Oui, monsieur,’ declared the little old man. ‘That is the famous Royalist who caused me so much trouble when I was young. I would know his face again anywhere.’
‘Bon! All this is very interesting.’ The tall, hard-eyed man glanced from the obscene pictures on the walls to the magnificent appurtenances of Satanic worship upon the altar, and went on in a silky tone: ‘I have had an idea for some time that a secret society has been practising devil worship in Paris and is responsible for certain disappearances, but I could never lay my hands on them before. Now I have got five of you red-handed.’
He paused for a moment then gave a jerky little bow. ‘Madame et Messieurs, permit me to introduce myself. I am le Chef de la Surete, Daudet. Monsieur le Duc, I arrest you as an enemy of the Government upon the old charge. The rest of you I shall hold with him, as persons suspected of kidnapping and the murder of young children at the practice of infamous rites.’
CHAPTER XXXII
THE GATEWAY OF THE PIT
For ten seconds the friends stood there staring at the detective. Castelnau’s presence gave them the key to this grotesque but highly dangerous situation. Mocata must have left the warehouse at almost the same time they had left the banker’s apartment. Perhaps their taxis had even passed within a few feet of each other, racing in opposite directions. Tanith had proved right after all when she had told them that she could see Mocata talking with Castelnau that night in his flat.
Mocata had found the banker there, released and revived him, and then listened to his story; realising at once that, since it was possible for De Richleau to hypnotise Castelnau against his will, it would be easy for him to do the same to Simon, learn the hiding place of the Talisman, and follow him to it.
Now that they had discovered the secret Satanic temple which was his headquarters in Paris, the place would be useless to him and only a source of danger. Unmentionable crimes had been committed there, and it would be far too great a risk for him ever to visit it again. Then the brilliant decision that, since the place had to be abandoned, he could at least use it to destroy his enemies.
The whole thing flashed through De Richleau’s brain in those few seconds. Mocata’s first idea that, if only he could get the police to the warehouse before they left it, he would have involved them in all the crimes associated with such a place and thrown them off his trail for good. Next, the vital question, how to get the police there in time. Would they act at once if Castelnau were sent to tell them a tale about Satanic orgies or only laugh at him? What practical crime could his enemies be charged with? Then the perfect inspiration. If the authorities were told that De Richleau, the Royalist exile, was a party to the business they would not lose a second, but seize on it as a heavensent opportunity to throw discredit upon their political opponents. What a magnificent scandal for the Government Press to handle.
‘Secret Royalist Society practises Black Art’‘Satanic Temple raided at Asnieres’‘Notorious exile arrested while performing Blasphemous Rites’. The Duke could see the scurrilous headlines and hear the newsboy’s cry.
And the trick had worked. They had actually been discovered in that house of hell with Simon in the tell-tale robes, seated before the altar, while he performed what must certainly have appeared to the police as some evil ceremony and the other three had stood there, forming a small congregation.
How could they possibly hope to persuade the tall, suspicious-eyed Monsieur le Chef de la Surete Daudet of their innocence, much less get him to agree to their immediate release. Yet, as they stood there, Mocata was on his way to the place where he kept his special plane, if not already aboard it. Night flying would have no terrors for him who, if he wished, could invoke the elements to his aid. Fleur would be with him and he meant to murder her as certainly as they stood there. His determination to secure the return of Tanith made the sacrifice of a baptised child imperative, and before another twenty-four hours had gone he would be in possession of the Talisman of Set, bringing upon the world God alone knew what horrors of war, famine, disablement and death.
De Richleau knew that there was only one thing for iteven if he was shot down there and thenhe sprang like a panther at the Chef de la Surete’s throat.
The detective fired from his hip. Flame stabbed the semi-darkness of the vault. The crash hit their eardrums like the explosion of a slab of gelignite. The bullet seared through the Duke’s left arm, but his attack hurled the Police-Chief to the ground.
Simon and Marie Lou flung themselves simultaneously upon the old detective Verrier. The thoughts which had passed through De Richleau’s mind in those breathless seconds had also raced through hers. If they submitted to arrest their last hope would be gone of saving her beloved Fleur.
Richard had no chance to pull his gun. The third man had grabbed him round the body but Rex rapped the policeman on the back of the head with his iron bar. The man grunted and toppled sideways on the chancel steps.
Rex leapt over the body straight for Castelnau. Quick as a flash, the banker turned and ran, his long legs flicking past each other as he bounded down the empty aisle, but Rex’s legs were even longer. He caught the Satanist at the entrance of the passage and grabbed him by the back of the neck. Castelnau tore himself away and stood panting for a second, half crouching with bared teeth, his back against the wall. Then for the second time that night Rex’s leg-of-mutton fist took him on the chin and he slid to the ground like a pole-axed ox.
De Richleau, his wounded arm hanging limp and useless, writhed beneath the Chef de la Surete who had one hand on his throat and with the other was groping for his fallen gun.
His fingers closed upon it. He jerked it up and fired at Richard, who was dashing to De Richleau’s help. The shot went thudding into the belly of the Satanic Goat above the altar. Next second the heavy prie-dieu which Richard had swung aloft came crashing down upon the Police-Chief’s head.
Rex only paused to see that the banker was completely knocked out, then rushed back to the struggling mass of bodies below the altar steps.
Simon and Marie Lou had managed the little man between them. Almost insane with worry for her child, her thumb nails were dug into his neck and, while he screeched with pain, Simon was lashing his hands behind his back.
Richard was pulling the Duke out from beneath the unconscious Chef de la Surete’s body. Rex lent a ready hand and then, panting with their exertions, they surveyed the scene of their short but desperate encounter.
‘Holy smoke! That’s done me a whole heap of good,’ Rex grinned at Richard. ‘I’m almost feeling like my normal self again.’
‘The odds were with us but we owe our escape to Greyeyes’ pluck.’ Richard looked swiftly at the Duke. ‘Let’s see that wound, old chap. I hope to God the bullet didn’t smash the bone.’
‘I don’t think sograzed it though and the muscle’s badly torn.’ De Richleau closed his eyes and his face twisted at a stab of pain as they lifted his arm to cut the coat sleeve away.
‘I know what you must be feeling,’ Simon sympathised. Ill never forget the pain of the wound I got that night we discovered the secret of the Forbidden Territory.’
‘Don’t fuss round me,’ muttered the Duke, ‘but get that damned priest’s robe off. If these people don’t return to the Surete more police will come to look for them. We’ve got to get out of here quick.’
In frantic haste Marie Lou bandaged the wound while Richard made a sling and the other two wrenched off the clothes of the detective that Rex had knocked out. Simon scrambled into them and,
as he snatched up the man’s overcoat, the others were already hurrying towards the entrance to the passage at the far end of the temple.
Richard rushed Marie Lou along the dark corridor and they tumbled up the flight of steps. Everything seemed to fade again after those awful moments when they had been so near arrest. She felt the cold air of the wharf-side damp upon her cheeks they were running down the narrow passage between the high brick wallsback in the gloomy square where the old woman still sat crouched upon the steps near the squalid cafe. Rex had taken her other arm and, her feet treading the pavements automatically, they were hastening through endless, sordid, fogbound streets. They crossed the bridge over the Seine and, at last, under the railway arches at Courcelles, found a taxi. When next she was conscious of her surroundings they were in a little room at the airport and the four men were poring over maps. Snatches of the conversation came to her vaguely.
‘Twelve hundred milesmore. Northern Greece. You cannot cross the Alpsmake for Vienna, then south to Triesteno, Vienna-Agram-Fiume. From Agram we can fly down the valley of the River Save; otherwise we should have to cross the Dolomites. That’s right! Then follow the coastline of the Adriatic for five hundred miles south-east to Corfu. Yanina is about fifty miles inland from there. You can follow the course of the river Kalamans through the mountains Shall we be able to land at Yanina, thoughyes, look, the map shows that it’s on a big lake. The circuit of the shore must be fifteen miles at least. It can’t all be precipitouscertain to be sandy stretches along it somewhere how far do you make it to Metsovo from there? twenty miles as the crow flies. That means thirty at least in such a mountainous district. The monastery is a few miles beyond, on Mount Peristeri pretty useful mountain - look. The map gives it as seven thousand five hundred feet we must abandon the plane at Yanina. If we’re lucky we’ll get a car as far as Metsovo God knows what the roads will be like after that we’ll have to use horses in any case. How soon do you reckon you can make it Richard?’
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