'Go, by all means,' smiled C.B. 'It might lead to something; one never can tell. I wonder, though,' he added after a moment, 'what the real explanation is about Morden. Did he really get bitten with this mumbo-jumbo, or did he deliberately desert his Church because he thought he was being watched and wanted to convince these people that he had fallen completely for the line they were selling him?'
Barney shook his curly head. 'I fear that's a thing that now we'll never know.'
'True enough, young feller. Anyway, don't let them turn you into a spook addict.'
'No fear of that, Sir,' Barney grinned. 'The odds are, though, that I'll get no more than a good laugh over the fun and games by which a few small-time crooks make a living out of the bunch of loonies that I'll find at this place tonight.'
When Barney had gone, Verney took from a drawer in his desk the photograph of Teddy Morden's body. After, staring at it for a moment, he thought to himself: 'It ties up. The moment Mary Morden told me about these seances, I felt certain it tied up. She doesn't stand much chance, poor kid; but, if Barney's as astute as I believe him to be, we'll get Morden's murderers yet.'
CHAPTER IV OUT OF THE PAST
That evening Fate took a hand, for it was decreed that a few minutes before eight o'clock Barney Sullivan and Mary Morden should meet on the doorstep of 204 Barkston Gardens.
They had approached from different directions and, until they came face to face, she noticed him only as a youngish man wearing a soft hat and a loose-fitting grey tweed overcoat that hung from broad shoulders, while he registered her as a tallish girl with her head well up and a fine springy walk. Then, as they turned together into the square brick porch, the electric light in its roof suddenly revealed clearly to each the face of the other.
Barney had no more than a vague feeling that he had seen Mary somewhere before; after which his mind switched almost instantly to speculate on why such a good-looking young woman should be dabbling in spiritualism instead of spending her evening at some cheerful party, or dining and dancing with a boy-friend.
That he did not know her again was perfectly understandable; for, apart from the fact that it was five years since they had met, Mary had changed her appearance in every way that was possible. Her smooth plaits had gone; she now wore her hair shoulder length and curled at the ends, and had had it dyed a rich, dark brown. Her thickish eyebrows had also been dyed, and plucked so that they remained fairly thick at the inner ends but tapered away to points which gave the impression that they turned up slightly at the ends. She was wearing more make-up: a much heavier shade of powder, that gave her fair skin the bronze tint of a brunette who has recently been sun-bathing, mascara on her lashes, eye-shadow, and a magenta lip-stick with which she had succeeded in changing a little the shape of her mouth. Her experience of making up while in cabaret had stood her in good stead, and even her ex-neighbours at Wimbledon would have been unlikely to recognize the quietly turned out Mrs. Morden in-this new presentation by which she had deprived herself of her golden hair, but become much more of a femme fatale.
On the other hand, at the first glance, Mary recognized Barney and her heart gave a jump that seemed to bring it right up into her mouth. Her face would have betrayed her had he not at that moment turned to ring the front-door bell. It was answered almost immediately by an elderly woman servant. Barney politely stepped aside for Mary to enter, then followed her in.
As the servant took his coat and hat, Mary walked on towards a middle-aged woman who was standing in the middle of the square hall. She was a large lady with a big bust on which dangled several necklaces of semi-precious stones. From her broad, flat face several chins sloped down into a thick neck, the whole being heavily powdered. Her eyes were a very light blue and unusually widely spaced. Upon her head was piled an elaborate structure of brassy curls, and her whole appearance suggested to Barney the type of rich Edwardian widow whose Mecca used to be the Palm Courts of Grand Hotels. He assumed, rightly, that she was Mrs. Wardeel.
To Mary she extended, held high, a carefully manicured and heavily beringed hand, as she said in a deep voice: 'Ah, Mrs. Mauriac; or perhaps, now that you have become a regular attendant at our little gatherings, you will allow me to call you Margot?'
'So, she is French,' Barney was thinking. But actually Mary had been mainly governed in the choice of a nom de guerre by making it fit with the initials on her handbags, and other personal belongings, that it would have been a nuisance to have to alter. It was only as an afterthought that it occurred to her that, as she had to take another name for a while, it would be rather fun to assume the sort of one that might have been chosen for a foreign film-star. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wardeel continued to gush at her.
'You know, I always take a special interest in the young who seek the great truths - young physically, I mean; for, of course, we are all young whenever we get away from these wretched bodies that anchor us here. Not, of course, my dear that that applies to you. But there is no escape from the advancing years, is there? And for the young to learn early that they will never really grow old is such a marvellous protection against the time when one's looks begin to fade. I am sure that one of the Masters must have you in his particular care to have guided you to us so early in your present incarnation.'
As Mary smiled and murmured a few appropriate words, Barney came up behind her. Mrs. Wardeel turned to him, again offered the beringed hand, and made a gracious inclination of her big synthetically-gold-crowned head.
'Ah; and now a new seeker after the Light. But we have two tonight. Are you Mr. Betterton or Lord Larne?�
Barney pressed the slightly flabby fingers and replied with a gravity that he felt the occasion called for. 'I'm Lord Larne, and I am most grateful to you for allowing me to - er - come here and learn about the sort of things that really matter.'
'You are welcome,' she said in her deep voice. 'I welcome you in the name of the Masters. All who come here are sent by them; but only upon trial. Do not expect too much at once. Those who show scepticism and demand proof for everything reveal by that that they are not yet sufficiently advanced to be worthy of approaching the higher spheres. But, if you are patient and receptive, stage by stage the great truths will be unveiled to you.'
Three more people had arrived so, turning to Mary, she added, 'Mrs. Mauriac, would you take our new friend, Lord Larne, through to the meeting room?'
Mary's heart was still pounding, but her face now showed nothing of her inward agitation. On Mrs. Wardeel's introducing her to Barney, they exchanged a conventional smile, then walked side by side towards a room at the back of the house. As they did so, she was wondering what could possibly have brought to such a gathering the type of man she knew him to be, and, even more extraordinary, why he should be using a title to which she believed he had no right.
The room they entered was long and fairly broad and looked larger than it was in fact because all its furniture - except a desk at one end - had been removed and replaced by seven rows of fold-up wooden chairs. Some twenty people had already taken their seats. Most of them were middle-aged and fairly prosperous looking; there were more women than men, and among the former were two Indian ladies wearing caste marks and saris.
Barney ran his eye swiftly over such of their faces as he could see from where he stood and decided that they looked a more normal crowd than he had expected - in fact, they might all have been collected in one swoop by clearing and transporting the occupants of the lounge of any of the better-class South Kensington hotels. Mary nodded a greeting to a few of them, then took the chair that he was holding for her. As he sat down beside her he said:
'I gather that you are one of the older inhabitants of this village, Mrs. Mauriac?'
'Oh, I . . .' her mouth felt dry and her voice threatened to rise from nervous tension. With an effort she got it under control. 'I'm far from that. This is only the third meeting that I've attended.'
Barney noted that she had no French accent, then he replied: 'Even that puts you
quite a bit ahead of me. Do you find the teaching easy to follow?�
'Some of it.' To cover her confusion Mary hurried on. 'I find the arguments for believing in Reincarnation simple and convincing, and I've become terribly interested in that. But I'm still a long way from understanding the Theosophical doctrine.'
'Really!' He raised his eyebrows. 'I was under the impression that Theosophists were anti-doctrinaire. I thought they concerned themselves only with getting at the original wisdom that is said to lie at the root of all the great religions, but most of which has since been obscured by the teachings introduced by many generations of ignorant priests.'
'That's quite true; Theosophy does not conflict with Christianity or Buddhism in their best sense. But all the same it has its own doctrine, and much of it seems awfully complicated to me. You see, it isn't as though this was a course of lectures in which one starts at the beginning; each is on a different aspect of the ancient teaching, and newcomers like you and I have to do our best to pick up what we can as we go along.'
Having by this time had a chance to take full stock of Mary, Barney was congratulating himself on his luck in acquiring so unexpectedly such a glamorous companion with whom to listen to what he anticipated would be a lot of twaddle; but he was temporarily prevented from developing the acquaintance further by the arrival of an elderly lady, leaning on an ebony walking stick, who greeted Mary with a smile, took the chair on her other side, and began to talk to her about the last meeting.
During the next five minutes another dozen or so people arrived, including a fat, squat Indian wearing thick-lensed glasses, and with protruding teeth, who from his bowing and smiling to right and left seemed to know nearly everyone there. Then Mrs. Wardeel came in followed by a small, bald man in a dark grey suit who looked as if he might have been a bank manager. He walked round to a chair behind the desk while she paused beside it. Silence fell and she said:
'Dear followers of the Path, Mr. Silcox is well known to most of you. We are blessed in having him with us again. Old friends and new alike will, I know, benefit from another of his talks. This evening he is going to speak to us on the True Light to be found in the Gospels.'
Mrs. Wardeel took a seat that had been kept for her in the front row and Mr. Silcox stood up. Without any unctuous preamble he went straight into his subject, which was to place a new interpretation on many of the sayings of Jesus Christ, given the assumption that He believed in Reincarnation, was Himself in His last incarnation, and was really referring to such matters most of the time.
According to Mr. Silcox, when our Lord spoke of His 'Father', He was referring not to a father either physical or divine, but to His own complete personality built up during countless incarnations, only a fragment of which He had brought down with Him to earth.
This argument was based on the Reincarnationist belief that everyone's parents are chosen for them only to ensure that they are given the sort of start in life best suited to provide them with an opportunity to learn whatever lessons are decreed for them in their new incarnation; and that they are their own father in the sense that their egos have already been formed by certain of their experiences during a long succession of past lives.
In support of this contention the speaker drew attention to that passage in the Second Commandment to the effect that God would 'visit the sins of the fathers upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation'.
'Could any sane person,' Mr. Silcox asked, 'believe a just god capable of showing such vicious malice as to threaten the innocent and unborn with dire chastisement for evil done by their physical parents or grandparents?' Clearly the explanation of this apparently harsh decree was that, each of us being spiritually the child of the personality we had created for ourselves in previous lives, if we did evil in our present incarnation we should have to pay for it in the future, and it might take us three or four more incarnations before we had fully worked off our debt.
All this was new to Barney and, far from being bored as he had expected, he found it deeply interesting; so for the next half-hour he gave his mind almost entirely to following Mr. Silcox's interpretation of the sayings of Our Lord.
Mary, on the other hand, was hardly listening. The main arguments for Reincarnation were already known to her, and her thoughts had gone back five years to the last time she had seen Barney. That had been in the grey dawn of early morning in a room of a small hotel in Dublin. He had not long got out of the bed they had shared and, having dressed, he had kissed her goodbye with the cheerful words:
'I'll see you again soon, sweetheart, and we'll have better fun next time.' But there had been no next time and, although she had searched high and low for him, she had never seen him again until tonight. With a sick feeling she went back in her mind over the whole sordid story of her life as Mary McCreedy.
Her mother had earned a precarious living as a small-part actress in musical comedy, vaudeville and anything else that offered. About her father she knew nothing except that, according to her mother, he was a naval officer and had been lost at sea while she was still an infant. As no reference was ever made to any of his family she suspected that he had never married her mother. In any case, whether or not she was illegitimate, she knew that to have been the case with her brother, Shaun, who had been born three years after herself. His father had been a Dublin business man, known to her during her childhood as Uncle Patrick. She assumed now that in those days he largely supported the household, as they had lived in reasonable comfort and she and her brother had been educated privately. But when she was fifteen 'Uncle' Patrick had died, and they had had to move to a much poorer part of the city.
Shortly afterwards her mother had taken her away from the Convent she was attending, to have her taught dancing. The following year she appeared in Pantomime and, as she was a well-developed girl for her age she had, by lying about it, got herself a job when barely seventeen in the Cabaret of a Dublin night-club.
Meanwhile her mother, having failed to find another permanent protector, and harassed by debt, had taken to the bottle; then, before Mary had been many months in Cabaret, on the way home one Saturday night in a state of liquor her mother had been knocked down and killed by a bus. After that Mary had had to move with her young brother into two rooms, and had become the sole support of their little household.
The night-club where she worked would not have been worthy of the name by continental standards, so hedged about was it with restrictions imposed by a Municipality under the moral influence of the Roman Catholic Church. There were no near-nude floor shows, nor was drinking permitted till the small hours of the morning. In fact, it was little more than a restaurant that hired a troupe of girls to sing and dance in little numbers which would not give offence to family parties and, in theory at least, the girls were all respectable. But, of course, between shows they were expected to act as dance-hostesses to any man who might ask them and so, inevitably, they were inured to receiving certain propositions.
Mary had been aware that some of her companions owed their smarter clothes and expensive trifles to accepting such offers, and she had not got on less well with any of them on that account; but at eighteen the teaching of the nuns still had a strong influence upon her. Moreover, she cherished romantic ideas that in due course a Prince Charming would come along, and that she would be shamed if, on his marrying her, she were not still a virgin. Yet, with a young brother to keep as well as herself, although the Church school to which he went had waived his fees since their mother's death, she found it ever harder to make ends meet.
That had been the situation when she met Barney Sullivan. He had come in one evening with several other young roisterers and picked her out to dance with. She had been attracted at once by his merry smile and carefree gaiety, but at the end of the evening he had casually given her a handsome tip and made no suggestion of seeing her again, However, in the weeks that followed he had come in on several occasions after dinner with three or four other well-off young fellows
out for a good time, danced with her, and given her the impression that he had fallen for her. Then one night he had turned up with the same little crowd of friends, this time slightly tight, but most cheerfully so; and, after sharing a bottle of champagne with her, he had suggested that she should sleep with him. On her making her usual reply that she was 'not that sort of a girl' he had refused to believe her, declaring with a laugh that all the girls there did if a chap could make it worth their while; but he had not pressed her further.
A few nights later he had come there again, and that night it so happened that she was in desperate trouble. Her young brother, who was in his last term at school, was the treasurer of the football club, and he had confessed to her that afternoon that he had spent the money entrusted to him. If he could not replace it by the following day he would be found out and branded as a thief. It was only a matter of six pounds odd, but she had not got it and had already had from the management an advance on her wage to pay the rent. She had intended to humiliate herself by attempting to borrow from some of the other girls, but that would have meant a further debt round her neck that it would be a struggle to repay. Barney, flushed with champagne and with a pocket full of money from a lucky day at the races, had offered her twenty pounds if she would do as several of the other girls had, and go to bed with him. Attracted to him as she was, and harassed by her anxiety about her brother, she had given way to his pleading.
No sooner had they left the club than she began to regret her decision and, for her, the next hour was one of misery. Although she was a normal healthy girl fully capable of passion, she was totally inexperienced; so a combination of panic, guilt and - much as she needed the money - shame at having succumbed to earning it in this way, temporarily rendered her frigid. Barney, feeling on top of the world, and his finer senses dulled by the wine he had drunk, swiftly set himself to overcome her unresponsiveness. It was only afterwards, as she lay weeping in his arms, that he realized to his considerable distress that she had been a virgin.
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