Realizing now that he must have come out on the opposite side of the wood from the cars, and might yet have to run a long way to reach them, he decided to find out if the cottage had a telephone. Two minutes later he was hammering loudly on its door, and shouting, 'Wake up there! Wake up!'
In response to his shouts a tousled head was thrust out of an upper window. Without waiting to be questioned or abused he cried, 'I'm a policeman. This is urgent. It's a matter of murder. Have you a telephone?'
'No, I haven't,' angrily replied the man at the window; then, as the reason for his having been aroused from his sleep sunk in, he added, 'Sorry I can't help. But there's one at the vicarage. Turn left and straight up the road. It's just past the church; you can't miss it.'
With a murmur of thanks Barney, still panting, dashed down the garden path to the lane on which the cottage faced, and up the road. After another gruelling run, now gasping for breath and sweating profusely, he reached the vicarage. The same tactics there led, after a few moments, to the front door being opened by a tall, middle-aged man in a dressing-gown, who said he was the vicar.
Using 'murder' again as the best means of getting swift action, Barney was led to the telephone and induced the desk-sergeant at the Cambridge police headquarters to put him through to the night-duty Inspector. To have mentioned Black Magic might have aroused scepticism; so Barney gave the code name by which his office was known to the police, and said that he was on the trail of a wanted enemy agent who was a known killer. Even so he had the greatest difficulty in persuading the Inspector to send more than one police car and also come out himself with a strong force of constables.
The vicar, his eyes on stalks as he listened, supplied the name of his village, which lay just over the crest of the hill; but this produced a new snag, as it was well across the county border, in the north-western corner of Essex. All Barney's persuasive powers were needed to induce the Inspector to cut red tape and enter another county but, by promising to take the responsibility if there was any trouble, he succeeded.
At Barney's request the vicar produced a map of the district. From it he quickly memorized the way to get back on to the other road from which the track led to the ruined Abbey; then he gratefully accepted the vicar's offer of a whisky and soda.
Twenty minutes later the Inspector arrived with three car-loads of police. Barney was waiting for them on the doorstep. Hastily thanking the vicar he showed the Inspector his special identity card, told him the direction to take and got into the back of his car. While they drove the better part of two miles along roads that went round the wood, he gave the Inspector the bare facts of the situation, then they bumped up the track to the place where the Satanists had left their cars.
The cars were no longer there but the sight of their fresh tracks, thrown up in the headlights of the police cars, dissipated the Inspector's suspicions that Barney was suffering from overstrain and had brought him out on a wild-goose chase. The wood was still dank and eerily silent, apart from the constant dripping from the trees; but the fog had cleared a little and they made their way as quickly as they could towards the Abbey.
As they approached it, Barney's fear that they would find Mary there, but dead and mutilated, was so great that his throat contracted till he thought he was going to choke; and when they came in sight of the chapel, as the police shone their torches into it, he had to make a great effort in order to force himself to keep his eyes in that direction.
No twisted body lay sprawled there, but his fears were hardly lessened until he had run forward and looked at the altar. Upon it there was no trace of newly-spilled blood. Only then was he able to hope that by some means Mary had succeeded in escaping the Great Ram's vengeance, temporarily at least. But, owing to her position in the chapel at the time she had wrecked the proceedings, he thought it most unlikely that she had got away; and he knew that as a result of her act every moment that she remained in the hands of the Satanists her life must be in danger.
In consequence, before the police had had a chance to do more than take a first look at the big black candles, he hurried them back to the cars and gave the Inspector directions on how to reach the Cedars. Another quarter of an hour sped by while the cars made their dash back into Cambridgeshire. They screamed their way through Fulgoham village then, as they reached the place where Barney had parked his own car some two hours earlier, he had them flagged down to a halt.
They all got out and the Inspector gave swift directions to his men to surround the house so that nobody could get away from it. He allowed five minutes for the men to take up their positions, then he and Barney walked up to the front door. Their ringing, after some minutes, brought Jim down to it. Barney said,
'You remember me. Your friend Iziah got the wrong idea and slugged me, but later I had supper with the Colonel. I've come back to talk to him again.'
Jim's eyes grew round. 'But he's not here, Boss. He left with you. He's gone off on leave, an' we're not looking to see him back for a fortnight. Didn't he tell you?'
Barney's hopes of catching the American and rescuing Mary were dashed, but he asked quickly, 'Where has he gone?'
'I wouldn't know, Boss,' came the obviously truthful reply. 'The Colonel don't go tell us boys how he's planning to spend his time.'
'All right,' Barney snapped. 'Perhaps I can find out by running over the house.'
The Inspector drew him aside and whispered, 'We haven't got a search warrant.'
'To hell with that!' retorted Barney. 'Stay outside if you like. I'm going in.' Fixing the coloured boy with a basilisk stare, he said to him, 'Go and get my gun. You'll find me in the sitting-room.'
Seeing that Barney was accompanied by a police inspector and that other policemen were standing about in the offing, Jim offered no opposition. Marching inside, Barney went straight to the telephone and got through to his office. He told the night-duty officer to ring the Chief and inform him that Sullivan had contacted Lothar Khune at a house near Fulgoham, in Cambridgeshire, in company with Mrs. Morden and an American Air Force Colonel named Henrick G. Washington, but had lost them and now had reason to believe that the trio were on their way to London.
He then helped himself to a whisky and soda and rang the bell. Jim appeared holding the little automatic. Barney took it, slipped it in his pocket and spent five minutes firing questions at him. But none of Jim's replies threw any light on whither his master might be bound. Barney sent for the other two boys, but his questions to them proved equally unrewarding.
He then spent half an hour going over the house. The sight of the black satin sheets on the bed in the principal bedroom aroused in him mingled feelings of nausea and homicidal jealousy, but he steeled himself to go through the drawers and cupboards. Neither there, in the sitting-room, nor anywhere else in the house did he discover any evidence which would have connected Colonel Washington with Satanist activities, and clearly his coloured servants regarded him as a quick-tempered, but generous, cheerful and entirely normal master.
Rejoining the Inspector, who all this time had been glumly waiting outside, Barney arranged for him to have the house kept under observation, on the off-chance that Lothar, or the Colonel, might return to it; then he collected his own car and accompanied the police cars back to Cambridge. On their arrival in the city the Inspector knocked up an hotel for Barney and, feeling that there was nothing more that he could do for the time being, he took a room in it.
By then it was close on three in the morning, and he had had a twenty-hour day, the last eight hours of which had been filled with constant strain and endeavour. Yet, tired as he was, he did not manage to get to sleep for over an hour after he had got into bed, because he was still so agitated about what might be happening to Mary.
He had left a call for seven o'clock. By a little after eight he was on his way to London, and well before ten he was in the office of C.B.'s P.A., declaring that he must see the Chief urgently as soon ns he arrived.
'He's already here,' the P.A. r
eplied with a slightly sour grimace. 'He has been here half the night, and wrecked my Sunday by calling me up at eight o'clock to report for duty. But he is expecting you, so you can go right in.'
C.B. was seated at his desk, but for once there were no papers upon it; apart from a used coffee cup it was empty. As Barney entered Verney turned his head and asked quickly, 'Any news of the Great Ram?'
'News?' Barney repeated. 'Not since I telephoned. I was hoping that the police had picked him up.'
'No, you were wrong about his being on his way to London. I had Scotland Yard lay on everything they'd got, but to no purpose. My bet is now that he has again left England by air.'
'What makes you think that, Sir?' Barney asked with nervous sharpness.
Verney gave a wry grin. 'If you've got a flask on you, you'd better take a pull from it. About one o'clock this morning your new pal, Colonel Henrick G. Washington, left his base in an aircraft. With him he took a little souvenir. Can you guess what it was?'
'Not . . .' Barney's eyes widened, '. . . not an H bomb?'
'You've hit it, chum; or near as makes no difference. Actually it was one of the latest pattern U.S. nuclear warheads.'
'And Lothar went with him?'
'Everything points to that.'
'But Mary! Mary!' Barney's voice was an anguished cry. 'What have they done with her?'
C.B. spread out his long hands. 'I can guess how you must be feeling, and I'd give a lot to be able to tell you that she is safe and well. As things are I think that you can take it that she is still alive. They went straight from the Abbey to the air base; so if they had killed her it is pretty certain that by now someone would have found her body. Unless she got away and is wandering, temporarily out of her mind, that leaves only one alternative. It is that they took her with them.'
Suddenly sitting down Barney began to hammer his clenched fists together. 'Oh God!' he moaned. 'Oh God, this is too ghastly! If only I'd gone direct to the air base. Earlier I was speculating on what Lothar was up to down there, and it occurred to me that he was probably planning to snatch some major secret from the Americans. But later, well, later . . .'
'Easy on, young feller, easy on. You'd had a packet yourself, and I'll not hold it against you that your thoughts were on the girl.'
'But if I'd gone to the air base I might have wrecked their plan, bagged Lothar, and rescued Mary.'
'No; you couldn't have done that. You were lost, you had no transport, and after you got away from the ruined Abbey over half an hour elapsed before you were able to communicate with the police. Even if you had directed them straight on to the air base, by the time they arrived and had explained matters to the Security people there it would have been too late. Colonel Washington's aircraft would already have taken off.'
Barney looked up in surprise. 'When I telephoned the office, I gave only the bare facts about my having got on to Lothar. I said nothing about the Abbey and the hellish business that took place there. How did you know . . .'
Smiling slightly, C.B. replied. 'Otto had a vision, and knocked me up in the middle of the night. I've since had a long report from the Cambridge police, and another from the U.S. Security people. Between them I've managed to form a pretty good picture of what happened. But of course there are gaps in it; and I'd like you now to give me a detailed account of your activities from the time you left Inspector Thompson after having a drink with him at The World's End.'
With an effort Barney dragged his thoughts away from Mary and for ten minutes made, in jerky staccato sentences, his report about his encounter with Ratnadatta and all that had followed.
When he had done, C.B. said, 'That clears up quite a lot of points. Now I'll give you my side of it. A little before two o'clock the Office called me and relayed your message. When I learned that you had actually contacted Lothar and believed him to be on his way to London I naturally went all out to get him. I not only alerted Special Branch, but got the Chief Constables of all the Home Counties out of bed to lay on networks in case he made for some hideout on the East or South coasts. After half an hour I'd done all I could so, having told the Office to call me if they got him, I put out the light and went to sleep again.
'About an hour later my step-son roused me out. Otto had woken him by hammering on the front door. I had Otto in and this is what he had to say. Round about midnight he was awakened by a violent blow on the chin. He says it was as though a flaming torch had been thrust into his face. Instantly he became identified with Lothar and, I suppose one can say, inside his mind.
'He saw as clearly as though in strong sunshine, a chapel in the ruined Abbey to which you had been taken, and you struggling in the grip of two hooded men. He was aware that Mary Morden was there and that it was she who had inflicted this grievous injury upon him. Although within seconds everything went black, he knew that you had got away, but at the moment his mind was obsessed with his desire to be revenged on Mary. Some of the Satanists produced torches and he rallied his strength to put a terrible curse upon her. But Colonel Washington intervened and threatened to rat on him unless he postponed taking any action against her.'
'So that's what happened.' Barney let out a swift sigh. His relief for Mary was faintly tinged with jealousy at the thought that it was the American instead of himself who had succeeded in protecting her; but he added quickly, 'And what then? Did they go straight to the air base?'
'I gather so. Otto's chin was paining him severely; so he got out of bed and bathed it. As the injury was a form of burn, that made matters worse rather than better, and for a time he lost touch with the situation. He says that when he picked it up again he seemed to be poised above a dark wood that was filled with fog; but he could see through the fog. He saw Lothar and the others making their way to several cars on the edge of the wood, then get into them and drive off. He saw you, too, on the other side of the wood, stumbling about in it, and obviously lost.
'Then, instead of getting on the telephone to me at once, the fool swallowed five or six aspirins to dull his pain, and got back into bed again. As he lay there he picked up Lothar in a car with Colonel Washington and Mary Morden. The car was approaching the air base, but soon after they had entered it the aspirins began to work and he dozed off. About three o'clock he woke, thought over his vision and decided that he ought not to wait until the morning to tell me about it; so he got up, dressed and came round to Dovehouse Street.
'As soon as I had heard Otto's story I felt sure that you were on the wrong scent about their being on their way to London. What is more, in view of the last coup Lothar pulled off, the idea that he had been taken into a United States air base by an Air Force Colonel who was another Satanist properly put the wind up me. I telephoned a warning to the base and asked that Colonel Washington and anyone with him should be put under preventive arrest. Then I hurried into my clothes, came up to the Office and gave the whole story over the scrambler line to H.Q. Strategic Air Command at Lakenheath in Suffolk.
'Half an hour later they came back to me to say that we'd missed the boat. Apparently Washington is a real rough diamond, but he was an ace flyer in the war, and stayed on in the Air Force afterwards only because he is mad-keen on flying. He has stacks of money and in addition to living like a prince in this house, the Cedars, outside the base with a team of imported coloured boys to look after him, he has his own private six-seater aircraft that he flies himself whenever he goes on leave to the Continent. He had applied for leave in the regular way and been given a fortnight. His 'plane is fitted with equipment for night flying; so no one thought it particularly strange that he should elect to take off at one in the morning. His service record is a brilliant one and there has never been the slightest hint of anything against him on security grounds.
'They knew nothing of anyone who might be Lothar, and the night duty-officer who was reporting to me obviously thought that I'd been sold a cock-and-bull story. No doubt that was partly because I had suggested in the first place that Washington was probably abou
t to fly one of their super-bombers off to Russia; and it transpired that he hadn't. I told this sceptical type to order a check-up on all secret equipment at the base to see if anything was missing; and that he had better get his Chief out of bed to take over from him, or he might regret it. After that, to fill in time I got on to Thompson to enquire how the raid on that place at Cremorne had gone off.'
Barney suddenly looked up. 'Bejesus! My mind has been so taken up with Mary and Lothar that I've never given it a thought. How did it go, Sir?'
'Ace high. We bagged the lot with their pants down. Thompson said that when they went in it was like a scene from the Folies Bergère, and that he hadn't seen so many nudes since his uncle took him on a trip to Paris when he was a youngster. They were bundled up in a blanket apiece and taken off to Cannon Row. There were about thirty of them and some dozen coloured people, men and women, but they were only staff, and all appeared to be slightly loopy.'
'Have you got the names of the Satanists yet?'
'Not the lot. When I rang up the Special Branch boys were still grilling them. But among them there is one cop that the Yard are particularly pleased about. He is a saintly-looking old gentleman named Bingley. His speciality is luring little girls into back-lots and strangling them. After his last murder the police had a clear case against him but before they could arrest him he disappeared. That was five years ago, and evidently he has been lying low very comfortably in the house at Cremorne ever since.'
'How about Ratnadatta?'
'Oh, he's been sent up from Fulham, to join the rest of the bunch.'
The Satanist Page 44