Strange Conflict

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘The brute was a huge bat, and when I first saw it its fangs were buried in your throat.’

  ‘Um,’ nodded Simon. ‘Look, there are the marks, two little round punctures near your jugular vein.’

  De Richleau touched the spot. ‘Yes; I can feel them. In a minute I must do a purifying rite to cleanse the place, but fortunately it could have had its fangs in me only for a few seconds otherwise I should feel much weaker than I do. The thing that worries me, though, is the fact that a Satanic force managed to get inside the pentacle. You must have made some slip when you were erecting our astral defences last night.’

  Marie Lou shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that. Simon and I made the pentacle together while you were getting ready to go to sleep, and we checked each other’s every move.’

  ‘Then one of you must have brought something unclean into the pentacle with you,’ said the Duke.

  ‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘And it’s entirely my fault. There were some letters and a passport; papers that I got out of the pocket of one of the prisoners. Rex and I had a pretty nasty turn last night down in the cellars. If I’d been my normal self I should never have done such a thing, but as it was, I brought the stuff with me when we came to bed and we were looking through it before going to sleep. I can’t say how desperately sorry I am.’

  De Richleau nodded. ‘Anything of that kind would be quite sufficient to enable an Evil Entity to materialise. Well, that explains the matter.’

  ‘It was just as much my fault,’ said Marie Lou quickly; ‘I forgot to bring down my “specs” so I couldn’t read for long, and I very nearly went to sleep—at least, I shut my eyes for a little and that gave the Thing time to materialise before I could warn you. I feel absolutely frightful about it.’

  ‘There’s no need for you and Richard to blame yourselves unduly,’ the Duke smiled, ‘as the fault really lies with me. I said that I wasn’t going out tonight. I ought to have stuck to that and remained in the pentacle near my body; then I should have seen at once what was happening, and could have slipped back into it before the brute had gained sufficient solidity to attack me. As it was, soon after I’d gone to sleep I decided that, after all, there couldn’t be any great danger in my going off to see if I could get some information that I am most anxious to obtain.’

  ‘That was pretty rash,’ said Simon.

  ‘I know; and if Marie Lou hadn’t roused up in time I might have paid for it in no uncertain manner. But I’ve discovered the thing for which I went to search the records, and I’ve got something extraordinarily interesting to tell you all—I now know the earthly base from which our enemy is operating.’

  A murmur of quick interest interrupted him for a moment, then he went on: ‘I was right about the lobster-claw piece of coast that Marie Lou and I saw—it is a portion of an island—and I believe that the Nazis have got hold of a High Priest of Voodoo to work for them on the astral. The island is the Negro Republic of Haiti, in the West Indies, and if we’re to stop this menace to British shipping we’ll have to go there.’

  12

  Crime Does Not Pay

  ‘What a break!’ Rex exclaimed. ‘Out there in the West Indies we’ll be able to forget this filthy war for a bit. Think of it—sunshine, bathing, dancing, big game, fishing, lots of good things to eat and drink—all the fun we used to have in those old peace-time days when we packed our grips for the sunny South.’

  Richard sighed. ‘Those lovely winter holidays in the sunshine are what Marie Lou and I have missed most. We’ve so often said what heaven it would be to go cruising with you all on the yacht again. Yet somehow it doesn’t seem right to leave England while there’s a war on, and I’ll bet that when we really got down to trying to enjoy ourselves we just wouldn’t be able to, because all the time we’d be thinking of what’s going on here.’

  Marie Lou slipped her hand through his arm. ‘You silly darling; it isn’t a question of enjoying ourselves and you know quite well that not one of us would dream of quitting for our own sakes; but this is different.’

  ‘Of course,’ added the Duke. ‘Far from running away from danger, we shall be going further into it, and this is a fight for Britain which only we can wage.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Richard agreed, still a shade reluctantly. ‘Anyhow, you’ve always been our leader and what you say goes.’

  ‘Thanks, Richard,’ de Richleau smiled. ‘We’ll set about our preparations tomorrow morning. In the meantime we’ve quite a lot to do after the narrow escape we had tonight; then some of us at least should get a little more sleep.’

  For the next hour they employed themselves in banishing all traces of the evil manifestation which had attacked them. The whole floor had to be thoroughly cleaned while the Duke performed certain exorcisms and the pentacle was remade. The French prisoner’s papers were taken outside to the hall, the Duke attended to the marks on his throat, the door was re-sealed, and they settled down again, with Richard and Rex to watch while the other three slept.

  When they awoke Richard, Rex and Simon, still wearing their wreaths of garlic flowers and crucifixes for protection, went down into the cellars to find out if the two prisoners were still there; but in the previous night’s panic the door had been left open and, as they had expected, both the Frenchman and the Jap had escaped, leaving no trace behind them.

  In the meantime Marie Lou helped the Duke upstairs to his bedroom and set about attending to his injured foot. As she dressed the gash he remarked:

  ‘Don’t put on too thick a bandage, because I must get a shoe over it. I’m going up to London to see Pellinore.’

  ‘No, Greyeyes, you’re not,’ she contradicted him promptly. ‘You put up a splendid front last night but that explosion shook you much more than you’d have us believe, and you can’t possibly expect this place in your foot to heal unless you keep your leg up. You’re not moving out of this house today and you’re going to spend it resting.’

  De Richleau was one of the most determined people in the world, but he had come up against Marie Lou before, and knew that she could be extraordinarily pig-headed. He glanced up at her uneasily as she went on:

  ‘Richard can quite well go up to London for you. All you have to do is to tell him what you want done. He will see Sir Pellinore and make all arrangements for our journey. ‘You know as well as I do that he’s extraordinarily competent at that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ agreed the Duke, ‘but it’s essential that I should see Pellinore myself.’

  ‘Then it’s a case of Mohammed and the Mountain,’ she countered. ‘Since I will not allow you to go up to see him he must come down here to see you.’

  ‘Impossible; he’s much too busy,’ said the Duke a trifle curtly.

  Upon which, somewhat to his surprise, Marie Lou replied: ‘Well, if he really is too busy to come down I suppose I’ll have to let you go, but I insist on your staying in bed for breakfast.’

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ de Richleau smiled. Yet he remained vaguely suspicious about her sudden surrender; and, as it proved, with good reason. An hour or so later, just as he was finishing his breakfast, she returned to his room and said with a mischievous smile:

  ‘You needn’t bother to get up, after all. I was lucky enough to get a personal call through to London with comparatively little delay, and I’ve spoken to Sir Pellinore. He says that no business is as important at the moment as the business which we are engaged on, and that as you’re laid up he’ll motor down to join us for luncheon.’

  The Duke laughed as he took her small hand and kissed it. ‘I might have known that you’d get the best of me—and, frankly, I’m not sorry. That bomb shook me up pretty badly and it’s rather a relief to be able to take things easy.’

  Soon after one Sir Pellinore was with them. When he was shown Marie Lou’s devastated sitting-room he expressed real concern and insisted that now that this strange war within the war had been carried on to the physical plane they must have a po
lice guard to protect them from further attempts upon their lives.

  De Richleau laughingly protested that it was quite useless to have police officers in the house, as instead of their being able to give protection after dark they would themselves require it and would only add to his own burdens; but Sir Pellinore persisted that, in any case, police could patrol the grounds to prevent strangers from getting near the house, and he forthwith put through a priority call to the Special Branch at Scotland Yard to arrange matters, at the same time giving particulars of the two enemy agents who had thrown the bomb and afterwards escaped.

  At the Duke’s special request he added that the officer in charge was not to call at the house or institute any inquiry but to confine his activities to seeing that no stranger was allowed to approach within two hundred yards of the house or its outbuildings.

  Over luncheon the Duke announced his discovery that the enemy was operating from Haiti and that it would be necessary for them to go there.

  ‘Why?’ asked Sir Pellinore bluntly. ‘From what I’ve gathered of this extraordinary business, you people seem to be able to travel anywhere, with perfect ease, in your sleep, so what’s to be gained by your all sailing off to the West Indies in the flesh?’

  ‘There is only one way in which we can stop this thing,’ said the Duke promptly. ‘The Adept of the Left-Hand Path whose astral gets on board each convoy-leader secure particulars of the route planned for it. He must then communicate with a Nazi occultist in Germany. The Nazi then wakes up and gives particulars to the German Admiralty, who issue code instructions to their submarines which are patrolling the Atlantic or dispatch dive-bombers from the French coast to attack the convoy; but each morning the Adept, however powerful he is, has to wake up in his body in Haiti, and he is the fellow we want to get at.’

  ‘One thing I don’t understand.’ Simon gave a little nervous wriggle of his head. ‘If an Adept in Haiti can get the information, why can’t the Nazi occultist to whom it is passed on get it for himself?’

  De Richleau shrugged. ‘That’s more than I can say for the moment; but I believe it’s a question of relative power. You must remember that when I started to operate I had definite facts to work upon. I knew the time and place from which the convoy was sailing and the route that it was to take. Therefore, each time I went out I knew, within a relatively small area, where to look for it. Our enemy, on the other hand, has no such information, and to search for a group of ships in the vast spaces of the Atlantic, without any guide at all as to where they are to be found, would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And, mark you, they must be located within twenty-four hours of their escort having left them, otherwise they would be getting to the limit of the belt in which the enemy can operate. If I were given such a job it’s almost certain that I should miss nine out of ten of the convoys, and probably the German occultist would be no more successful.’

  ‘Whereas the fellow we’re up against manages to locate every convoy in the limited time at his disposal,’ cut in Richard.

  ‘Exactly. How he does so I don’t pretend to know, but he is evidently an Adept of very great power, and that, I think, is why the Germans have to work through him instead of doing the job for themselves.’

  ‘Sounds feasible,’ boomed Sir Pellinore; ‘that is, as far as any of this stuff can be said to make sense at all. But I still don’t see why you’ve got to go all the way to Haiti to deal with the feller—I mean, since this battle is being fought on the—er—astral plane.’

  ‘Because,’ said the Duke patiently, ‘the only way in which we can stop this thing is by killing the Haitian Adept, and only in our physical bodies can we do that.’

  ‘Sure. That adds up about having to go there if we want to rub him out,’ said Rex. ‘But how’s killing him going to prevent his astral from carrying on the dirty work and continuing to turn over the information that they want to his Nazi friends while they’re asleep?’

  ‘A very shrewd question, Rex,’ the Duke smiled, ‘and the answer lies in the law of the Timeless Ones who have created all things as they are. As I explained to Pellinore some time ago, and as all of you are aware, when we have achieved a certain state of advancement through many lives we have complete continuity of consciousness—that is to say, when we are asleep our astral knows everything there is to know about the physical body to which it is temporarily attached, and when we are awake we are able, through long practice, to remember all that we do on the astral plane. More: when we achieve true memory we are able to look back and recall all that we did in our innumerable past lives on Earth. Therefore, the genuine Adept, whether of the Right or the Left-Hand Path, can view his existence, either in the flesh or out of it, as one continuous whole.’

  Simon nodded. ‘That’s what makes it so difficult to trap a really powerful Black. Having continuity of consciousness enables him to be perpetually on guard, so it’s practically impossible to take him by surprise; whether he’s in his body or out of it, he’s always on the look-out to foil any attempt which may be made to get at him.’

  ‘True,’ de Richleau agreed. ‘But the Wise Ones foresaw that and provided for it. However powerful an individual may become, there is always one moment, which occurs every two or three hundred years, when he is completely helpless. That moment is at the end of each Earth life. It doesn’t in the least matter if people die in bed of so-called old age, or, at the height of their strength, through violence. As each incarnation finishes, there is a brief space of time in which the individual suffers a complete black-out, and it is then, in the case of a Black Magician, that the warriors of Light can rush in and chain him.’

  Sir Pellinore passed a large hand over his fine head of white hair. ‘Dear me, this is all very—well, I won’t say that it’s beyond me—but a bit outside the compass of an ordinary feller like myself. Still, I’ve no doubt that you know what you’re talking about, and it all seems to fit in. I take it, then, that you propose to kill the chap who’s making all the trouble and collar his—er—soul I suppose you’d call it—while the going’s good. What happens to him then? Not that I care what you do to the feller, but just as a matter of interest. Is it possible to kill his soul too?’

  ‘No,’ smiled the Duke; ‘but we can cast it into prison. No individual is wholly bad, and Black Magicians are only people who have gone astray throughout a number of incarnations. It’s quite a reasonable analogy to compare them with men who have become habitual criminals in this life. Most crooks start their criminal careers as youngsters who through bad example, or a sudden impulse, pick a pocket or rob a till and get away with it. They know perfectly well that they’re running a risk and that sooner or later they will be caught and punished, but they’re tempted through laziness or ambition, and, more often still, by false pride which flatters them into thinking how clever they are to continue obtaining money by illicit means instead of working for it. Sometimes the shock of being caught and put on probation or given a light prison sentence is enough to bring them to their senses and they mend their ways. In other cases they have to be given sentence after sentence before they finally decide that crime does not pay.’

  ‘Oh, come!’ protested Sir Pellinore. ‘What about the old lags? The really hardened crooks never give up their profession however often they’re jailed.’

  ‘One moment. I grant you that the average Earth life of seventy years is not long enough to cure the worst cases. But if men lived for seven thousand years, instead of for seventy, I think you’ll agree that the most hardened crook that ever lived would get a little tired of prison after he had done about two thousand years inside and each new sentence was getting longer and longer.’

  ‘Ha!’ Sir Pellinore guffawed. ‘That’s good. Yes, you’re right there, Duke; I see your point.’

  ‘Well, that’s what happens on the astral. There’s not one of us who hasn’t dabbled in Black Magic at some time or other during our many lives, and at one time I could do as neat a job of sorcery as most people myself; but t
he majority of us give it up after being hauled up and cautioned, while the hardened cases go on for maybe a dozen lives or more, until they’re caught out and sentenced to a really long spell. If that’s not enough they get an even heavier sentence next time they’re caught; and, of course, each prison sentence sets them back on the upward journey which we all have to accomplish sooner or later whether we like it or not.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Simply that if a spirit is cast into prison for having taken the Left-Hand Path it is automatically debarred from any chance of reincarnation during the term of its imprisonment. Prison sentences are much longer on the astral than they are on Earth, so a bad Black might easily get a thousand years. That would set him back three or four lives and the long intervening periods in which we are not in incarnation; and as he has to live those lives some time before he can possibly pass on to a higher sphere all that lost time later proves a heavy handicap. However, as you’ve got to get back to London we mustn’t wander too far from the matter in hand. I take it that you can arrange passages to Haiti for us?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Sir Pellinore quickly. ‘I’ll have you flown over to Lisbon and will see that seats are reserved for you on the Clipper to New York. It would be better for you to fly from New York to Miami and hire a plane there to take you on to your destination. Money, of course, is no object, but speed is of the first importance.’

  ‘Situation’s still pretty bad, then,’ hazarded Simon.

  ‘Bad!’ echoed Sir Pellinore, lifting his blue eyes heavenwards. ‘My God, if you only knew! The Intelligence people are going grey with worry over it, and even the “silent” service has been forced to admit that it’s at its wits’ end. Up to the moment the P.M. has been most sympathetic with the difficulties of all concerned, but I can see the point coming when his patience will be exhausted; and when that happens I’d rather have to face Hitler.’