Strange Conflict

by Dennis Wheatley

  The cabin was full of water and the launch now sinking under them, but they did as they were ordered. A rope-ladder was lowered and de Richleau’s party, including the Jamaica boys, pulled themselves up it.

  Immediately the Duke reached the gunboat’s deck he addressed the officer in fluent French and with the arrogance of a victor rather than a captive. In firm tones he stated that seven of his party were British subjects and the eighth an American; and that the British and United States Goverments would call the Haitian Government to account for having, without the slightest provocation, endangered the lives of the occupants of the launch by firing upon them.

  The officer was so dumbfounded at this impudence that he hesitated before answering, but he said that although he himself knew nothing of the matter it had been reported that the Duke’s party had assaulted a surgeon at the hospital and, under her parents’ eyes had forcibly removed the body of a girl who had died there that morning.

  ‘Have you a warrant for our arrest?’ snapped the Duke. ‘If so, will you kindly show it to me.’

  No, the Haitian Captain admitted, he had not a warrant, but in such an emergency he had considered it his plain duty to put to sea in order to prevent such evil-doers from leaving the country.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said the Duke. ‘You have obviously only acted in accordance with your understanding of the situation, if extremely rashly. We will answer any charges which may be brought against us; but immediately we get back to port I shall look to you to inform the British and America Consuls of what has occurred and ask them to meet us, so that we can tell them our side of this affair without the least delay. I shall also hold you personally responsible for our safety.

  The Captain appeared to agree to this, as he nodded before ordering some of his men to escort the three Jamaica boys forward and the White prisoners aft. Ugly looks were cast at them as they were hurried away and there was a considerable amount of hissing, spitting and fist-shaking among the excited crew, but a junior officer prevented any open attack from being made upon them, took them below and had them locked in a roomy cabin which appeared to be the wardroom of the vessel. They then had their first opportunity to examine properly the many hurts they had sustained an hour before, when they had so narrowly escaped being lynched; while the gunboat chugged back to port.

  Soon after the ship had docked the Captain appeared, with several armed sailors behind him, to say that they were to be taken ashore. The news of the riot and its cause had now spread through the whole Haitian capital. Even people in the outlying suburbs who had not heard of it had been attracted by the unusual sound of gunfire and the sight of their warship pursuing a launch out in the bay so that, in spite of the mid-morning heat, the entire wharf-side was now crammed with a heterogeneous mass of people.

  The prisoners had seen through the port-holes the great expectant multitude which was so inflamed against them and de Richleau had already made up his mind that if he and his friends stepped ashore their lives would not be worth a moment’s purchase. He voiced the feelings of them all as he said to the Captain:

  ‘No, thank you. We have no intention of leaving this ship until the crowds are dispersed. The people of Port-au-Prince have been told a completely wrong version of what has happened and think that they have excellent grounds for regarding us as worse than murderers. Before we got fifty yards they would overcome your sailors and pull us to pieces. If that occurred, His Brittanic Majesty and the President of the United States would both send warships here. As just retribution for our deaths I have no doubt at all that they would blow half the town to pieces and then take over the country. Unless you wish that to happen, and Haiti to lose her independence for good and all, you will leave us where we are and send your magistrates here, together with the British and American Consuls, as soon as you can so that this unfortunate business can be settled without bloodshed.’

  As the one dread of every Haitian official is that his country may once more be taken over by the Whites—a calamity for which the Captain had no intention of being held responsible—he saw the sense of this, so agreeing to the Duke’s suggestion, he locked them in again and left.

  It was getting on for eleven and the sun, now high in the heavens, beat down upon the deck above. The cabin had the curious and unpleasant smell of stale tobacco-smoke and beer.

  For a little while after the Captain’s departure none of them said anything; they were too occupied in endeavouring to recoup themselves after the physical exertions and mental stresses that they had been through, and all of them were conscious that although they had won a great spiritual victory by giving proper burial to Philippa’s body and at last bringing peace to her spirit, they had landed themselves in most desperate straits.

  The fact that the body was no longer with them when they were caught would hardly stand them in much stead, for it would be assumed that, fearing to be captured with the evidence of their crime, they had thrown it overboard simply to be rid of it. No doubt the Haitian magistrates would know all about Zombies, but it remained a most speculative matter as to whether they would officially acknowledge such a belief in front of Europeans. The good-class Haitians were most averse to it being known that such a horrible abuse of corpses still existed in their country, but out of a fear—a fear which they had imbibed with their mother’s milk—for anyone even remotely connected with such practices, they might well condemn the White prisoners almost without a hearing. Besides, none of the prisoners saw what sort of a defence they could possibly put up, since they had not a shred of evidence to prove that Doctor Saturday was a Bocor from whom they had rescued the girl’s body and they certainly could not prove—as they had avowed in the hospital—that she was not the daughter of Monsieur and Madame Martineau.

  The full grimness of their situation was finally brought home to them when Simon, now dead-beat after his many hours of unbroken mental and physical activity, sighed wearily and said that he would give a thousand pounds for an hour’s sleep.

  De Richleau gave a bitter little laugh and reminded them that he had been compelled to leave the suitcase containing the new impedimenta, which Richard and Rex had gone to such trouble to fetch all the way from Jamaica, in the flooded cabin of the motor-launch; and by its sinking they had once more been robbed of the means of securing adequate astral protection. Like a force that is beleagured by land and sea, they were now in physical peril from any fate which the Haitian authorities mught decree for them, and should they fall asleep, they would be an easy prey for the merciless enemy who would assuredly await them on the other plane.

  A little after midday a junior officer entered the cabin followed by a sailor and a slatternly-looking Negro steward, who dumped down a tray on which were five bowls of cornmeal-mush, a hand of bananas, some mugs and a large jug of water. De Richleau asked the officer if they could soon anticipate a visit from the British and American Consuls, but he shook his head and replied in bad French. He had no idea; all he had heard was that they were to be taken ashore for examination in the cool of the evening, provided that a good portion of the crowd had dispersed.

  When he and his men had withdrawn, the prisoners halfheartedly set about the meal. None of them liked the look of the cornmeal-mush but they ate a few bananas and, the stuffy heat having made them all extremely thirsty, eagerly drank up most of the water.

  While they were eating, they spoke in low voices of Philippa. Marie Lou said that she wondered how the girl could have been planted upon Sir Pellinore, and the Duke replied wearily:

  ‘How can one say? It may have been managed in a dozen different ways. Evidently our adversary is much more powerful than I imagined. He must have found out that we intended to come to Haiti. Perhaps his astral plane was present and listening to our conversation on the day that Pellinore came down to lunch with us at Cardinals Folly. If it was, he’d have learnt in one brief session all our plans for our journey and have had ample time to make his own arrangements.’

  ‘Still, it must have been
pretty difficult for him to foist the girl on us at such sort notice,’ remarked Richard.

  The Duke shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Through his astral he may be able to communicate with a number of occultists in Europe, and just because he is working for the Nazis it doesn’t at all follow that they are all in Germany. He may have given instructions in a dream to some Fifth Columnist in London who is under his orders. How Philippa reached England from Marseilles I don’t pretend even to guess; but quite possibly she was brought over from her convent, with other refugees, at the time of the French collapse. Once he knew that the French were going out of the war, that fiend, Saturday, may have decided that she would be more useful to him in London and had her shipped over. If she was ready to hand you can see for yourselves that it wouldn’t have been difficult for German agents in London to fix it with Ricardi—who is either one of them or under their thumb—that she should pose as his daughter and that he should get in touch with Pellinore, mention casually the problem of getting the girl to the West Indies and, when Pellinore said he had friends proceeding there, ask him to get us to take her.’

  They sank into miserable silence again, not caring to talk of the unpleasant possibilities which lay ahead of them that evening and the coming night; but Simon was now so tired that after a time he said that he doubted if he could hang out without sleep much longer, and the rest of them were terribly somnolent from the heat of the stuffy, smelly cabin.

  It was Marie Lou who suggested that since charged water had served to protect the Duke and herself when awake, through those long hours of darkness two nights before, surely it must be a strong enough barrier to protect them while asleep during the full bright light of day; therefore why should he not charge the remaining water in the jug and draw a pentacle on the floor of the cabin with it, so that they could snatch a few hours’ blessed oblivion during the sultry afternoon?

  He agreed that, although there might be some risk in doing so, their extremity was such that it should be taken, and he was just about to pick up the jug when the door opened again. Doctor Saturday stood on the threshold.

  Simon roused himself sufficiently to notice with a vague satisfaction that the Doctor was bearing heavily upon a stick and limping badly. He came in, closed the door behind him and leaned against it.

  ‘Well? So your little hour of freedom has ended,’ he said, his white teeth flashing in a smile that was now full of cruel, unrestrained malevolence. ‘I must congratulate Monsieur de Richleau upon his resource and courage as a body-snatcher. It is only by a miracle that you’re not all lying in the local morgue; torn and bleeding victims of the frenzied mob. However, since you have survived, it will give me great pleasure to settle your business personally.’

  He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘You need not imagine that the British or American Consuls will come to your assistance. I have considerable powers in this country as well as on the astral, so I at once took steps to see to it that neither of those gentlemen will be informed officially or unofficially of the plight into which you have got yourselves. If you have any apprehensions as to what may happen to you when you are brought before a Haitian court I can relieve you of them. You will not appear before any court, because you will all be dead before this evening.’

  ‘Aw, go to hell! Get to blazes out of here!’ snarled Rex.

  But the Doctor continued, quite unperturbed.

  ‘In the war that is being waged across the water Britain will be defeated, and the British race will be for ever broken. Some of you may have heard what the Nazis have done in Poland: how they have transported the Polish men by the thousands in cattle-trucks to work in chain-gangs in their mines: how they have injected the whole of the virile population so as to make them incapable of producing children: how they have sent the Polish women by the thousands into brothels for the amusement of the German soldiery.

  ‘Well—that is nothing compared with what Hitler intends to do to the British people in the hour of his victory. They will be enslaved in the fullest meaning of the word, and the arrogant British upper-class will be set to the meanest labours. The Nazis understand that there can be no permanent mastery of the world for them until the British race has ceased to exist. There is never to be another generation. Your men will be made eunuchs and your women rendered sterile. The old and useless will be slaughtered like cattle, then the British Isles will be depopulated by wholesome shipments of her remaining men and women to toil as beasts of burden for their masters on the Continent until death brings them release.’

  ‘First catch your hare, then cook it,’ Richard sneered. ‘Every man and woman of British blood would rather die than surrender, and we’ll paste blue hell out of those Nazi swine before we’re much older.’

  ‘You and your friends are already in the net,’ the Doctor replied smoothly, ‘and by your own folly you have all brought upon themselves an even worse fate than which will befall your countrymen. I have told you what the Nazis will do to them. And now I will tell you why I am giving Germany my aid; so that you, as representatives of your race, may for once understand the hatred it has inspired by its greed and arrogance.

  ‘My father was an Englishman, my mother was a Mulatto girl of good parentage; but he did not think her good enough to marry, so her family, feeling that she had disgraced them, turned her out into the streets. Having taken his pleasure with her he had no more use for her at all, and returned to his own country leaving her destitute. She was just another “coloured girl” who had served to amuse him during his travels. My youth was hard, but I had brains and a strong will. When I was eighteen I worked my way to England, and although I could speak very little of the language, I sought out my father. He not only refused to acknowledge me because a coloured bastard would have shamed him before his friends, but he drove me from his house; and when I persisted he had me prosecuted for creating a nuisance. Then the English police deported me as an undesirable alien.’

  ‘Judging by what we know of your more recent history, they were probably right,’ said de Richleau acidly.

  The Doctor’s face became a mask of fury. ‘So you persist in your defiance!’ he almost screamed. ‘But I will break your pride—and break your will—even more thoroughly than the Nazis will break the spirit of the British people. You thought you were so clever today when you robbed me of that girl whom I had made into a Zombie. But a life for a life is not enough, and there is no escape for you from this place. The seed of death has already been planted in you. It is my will that all of you shall die within the next two hours, and out of you I will make five Zombies for the one that you have taken from me.’

  Without another word he turned on his heel and, slamming the door behind him, relocked it.

  ‘Temper, temper!’ said Richard, trying to make light of what they all felt to be no empty threat but one with real and deadly purpose behind it.

  ‘What did he mean when he said that he had already planted the seed of death in us?’ asked Marie Lou.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ replied the Duke; ‘unless he arranged to have some subtle poison inserted into the food we were given for our midday meal. His authority here seems to be absolute. The Haitians evidently know that he’s a powerful Bocor and consequently are scared stiff of him. But in any case he can’t make Zombies out of us until we’re actually dead.

  ‘If he did have poison put in the food,’ said Rex, ‘it’s a hundred bucks to a peanut that it was mixed up in the cornmeal-mush, and none of us ate any of that. We’d surely have noticed if the bananas had been tampered with, and we drank only plain water.’

  It comforted them considerably to think that if the Doctor had put poison in their food they had escaped once more. But the cabin was like an oven, and apart from their anxious, gloomy thoughts they had nothing at all to occupy them. They were all literally drooping with fatigue, and Simon, who had been awake far longer than any of the others, could hardly keep his eyes open, so the project of making a pentacle with charged water was revivied.

/>   De Richleau set the earthenware jugs before him, and, pointing at it with the first and second fingers of his right hand, on a level with his right eye, began to call down power, which passed in an invisible stream through him and into the jug.

  To his surprise and extreme perturbation, the clear, tepid water suddenly began to bubble, and with a bitter grimace he lowered his hand.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Marie Lou.

  He sighed as he looked round at the anxious faces of his friends. ‘I’m afraid we’re up against it. The water cannot be charged, because it is not pure. That spawn of Hell has got the better of us—he mixed some tasteless and colour-less poison with the water, and we all drank a mug or more of it over an hour ago. It’s too late now for us to make ourselves sick, as the poison must already be working in our veins. That’s what he meant when he said that the seed of death was already in us.’

  21

  Coffins for Five

  The minutes that followed seemed like an eternity as they sat contemplating the terrible fate with which their enemy had threatened them, and now that they knew they had been poisoned they almost at once began to believe that they could feel the symptoms of the noxious drug.

  The intense heat from the tropical sun beating down on the deck above their heads and the stale smell of the airless cabin were calculated to induce drowsiness in anyone, but Richard and Rex had slept long and well returning from Jamaica in the launch the previous night, and both felt that the extreme torpidity which afflicted them must be partially attributable to some cause other than their surroundings.

  Marie Lou had been sitting for a long time in one position and when she moved her leg she found that she had pins-and-needles in her foot, which with a sudden feeling of panic she put down to the first effects of the poison.