'In that case,' said Mary, 'I still wish to be accepted as an initiate.'
'Good; very good.' He sounded pleased, although not particularly so. 'You may congratulate yourself. Wisdom acquired in your past lives has again conquered inhibitions with weech your upbringing shackled you in this. I shall set your feet firmly on the Path for good life obtained by power to influence minds off others.'
A moment later she felt his fingers at the back of her head, untying the handkerchief that blindfolded her, and he added: 'Now you haf taken decision it ees not necessary to drive long way round about. Excuse plees that I shall drop you here; but so I am sooner back.'
On looking about her Mary saw that the taxi was moving eastwards and running up towards Hyde Park Corner. As they neared the bus stop, Ratnadatta said, 'I see you at Mrs. Wardeel's on Tuesday, yes? After that again on Saturday. You meet me plees at Tube Station as before. But this time later; at nine thirty o'clock.' Then he tapped on the window for the taxi to stop They wished each other good night, she got out and the taxi carried him on in the direction of Piccadilly.
It was not yet quite midnight so the buses were still running. After a wait of five minutes she got one, and as she looked round at her fellow passengers she wondered what they would think if they knew how she had spent the evening. Had she told them, she knew that they would never believe her, and would put her down as mad. But she was not mad, and the possession of such a secret gave her a feeling of superiority over them. All the same, by the time the bus set her down in Cromwell Road, the excitement that had buoyed her up for the past two hours was rapidly draining away.
Making as little noise as possible she crept upstairs and on reaching her little flat made herself a cup of coffee. As she drank it she visualized again the extraordinary things she had witnessed. On a sudden impulse she gave her arm a hard pinch to make certain that she was not dreaming.
She was not. That hideous black imp and the pregnant woman had not been part of a nightmare. She had really seen them. And she had arranged to go to the temple again with Ratnadatta next Saturday. If she did, she would have to submit to initiation. While the Indian had been talking to her about it that had not seemed too high a price to pay for the chance of identifying Teddy's murderers. But now, at the thought of those evil near-naked servants of the Devil, with whom she would have to feast and dance, a wave of panic and revulsion swept through her. Teddy was dead. Nothing she could do would bring him back to life. It was madness to place herself in the power of such people for the slender hope of being able to revenge him. Her nerve would break and she would give herself away. Suddenly she reversed her recent decision. She would not go on Saturday; or to Mrs. Wardeel's on Tuesday, either. She would make a clean break while there was still time, and try to forget the whole awful business as soon as possible.
CHAPTER VII AN UNFORTUNATE - ACCIDENT (?)
On Sunday morning Mary lay late in bed. The emotions that had agitated her the previous night had taken a lot out of her, and she felt tired and listless. As she thought over all that Ratnadatta had told her of the ancient cult, she had to admit to herself that many of his arguments in its favour were logical and, perhaps, contained a sub-stratum of truth. Yet that did not alter the fact that the advantages obtained by its few unscrupulous adherents must be gained at the expense of many honest decent people, and its amoral teachings be a menace to family life, high principles, and everything that went to make a well-ordered world.
But, in any case, she had not been seeking to obtain power for herself, and her resolution to be done with Ratnadatta and all to do with the occult remained unchanged.
That left her with a new problem. What was she now to do with herself? She could not yet pick up the threads of her old life where she had left them, because before leaving Wimbledon she had gone to an estate agent, told him she was going to Ireland, given him the keys of her flat and asked him to let it furnished for her for three months for the best price he could get.
Thinking of the flat turned her thoughts to Teddy. It was now six weeks since his death, yet, at times, she still missed him terribly. It was not that he had ever been for her the world's great heart-throb, but he had been gentle, generous and reliable and she had come to count on his companionship. He had been quite good-looking, too, a very adequate if not terribly exciting lover, and always most appreciative of all she did to make their home a place to which he could be proud to bring his friends.
Since he had had so many fine qualities, she wondered now why she had never felt more deeply about him, and decided that probably it was because he had been too transparently good to keep a woman intrigued for long by his personality. It seemed a sad commentary on life that the best men often failed to do so, whereas gay, irresponsible deceivers like Barney Sullivan could so often make women adore them.
It occurred to her then that at least she had Barney left over as a legacy from her abortive investigation into Teddy's murder. Planning the moves for her revenge on him would give her something to think about between the occasional jobs she was getting as a model. She would be seeing him again that night and this time she would give him some encouragement, anyhow to the extent of letting him kiss her.
At midday she got up and cooked herself an egg dish in the tiny kitchenette. It was very sparsely equipped and as she stood at the minute gas-stove she wished, not for the first time, that she were back in her own well-furnished kitchen at Wimbledon. It gave her the idea of going out there. Not to the flat, as by this time it was certain to be occupied by strangers; but she loved the Common. It was a sunny day and now that it was mid-April the silver birches would be putting out their tender young green leaves. The chance of her running into anyone she knew was small; and, suddenly recalling the way in which she had completely changed her appearance, she realized that they would not know her if she did. Anyway, now she had decided to stop playing the detective it was no longer necessary to avoid all contacts with life as Mrs. Morden.
As usual she took ample time to make herself up and dress with care, then she went out and took a bus up to the Green Man on the corner of Putney Heath. Owing to the fine weather there were quite a lot of people about, and twice single men driving slowly by in cars attempted to pick her up. But she was used to such unwelcome attentions when alone and, ignoring them, struck out with her long firm stride across the common. In turn she visited all her favourite spots; the old Windmill, the dell where William Pitt the younger, while Prime Minister, was said to have fought a duel, and the ponds on which the children were sailing their boats.
The fresh air and the long walk did her a power of good, the healthy sights and sounds around her drove from her mind haunting thoughts of the Great Ram, and after making a hearty tea at a little place just off the Common, to which she had been on a few previous occasions, she returned to London in excellent form for her next encounter with Barney.
They had arranged to meet at seven-thirty, and when she arrived at the Hungaria there he was in the foyer looking as devil-may-care as ever, but with an eye-shade over his left eye, and the curve of his cheek below it badly discoloured.
With a slightly amused grimace she said: 'It looks as if you have been mixed up in a fight.'
'I have,' he laughed. 'I'll tell you all about it when you've parked your coat.'
When she came out of the cloakroom he took her downstairs to the cocktail lounge and, as soon as they had ordered drinks, she asked, 'Now! What have you been up to?' 'I hit a man smaller than myself, and got the worst of it!' 'Then you deserved your lesson,' she said, although she did not believe him. He might be a thoroughly bad hat where women were concerned, but she felt certain he was not the type of man to do anything cowardly. All the same, it intrigued her that, instead of producing some cooked-up story about having defended a child or a dog against ill-treatment by a gang of toughs, he should elect to pretend to have been in the wrong.
'As a matter of fact,' he told her with a lopsided grin, 'I got it in a free-for-all. Last night
some pals of mine suggested that we should try our luck at a gambling joint that one of them knew of up in St. John's Wood. After a bit of a binge we went along there and played chemi for a while. Of course the game was rigged, as it always is in those sort of places; but the bloke who runs it made it a bit too obvious that he took us all for suckers. When we caught him out red-handed, we decided to break the place up. By ill luck I found myself up against the chucker-out. He was only a little runt of a man, but I suppose he had served in the Commandoes or something. Anyhow, before I knew what was happening, he had given me this whopper, and a couple of minutes later he bundled me out into the street.' The truth was very different. The previous night he had attended a Union meeting down in Shoreditch and come up against one of the casual risks inseparable from his investigation.
His work entailed his covering the activities of several Branches, each of a different Union, for all of which his office had provided him with forged membership cards, and he could, at most, have taken a regular job in the area of only one of them. Since it would have been pointless to devote eight hours a day to working as a docker, busman or some other category of labourer, having told the Secretary at each branch that he had recently come to London from Ireland for family reasons, he had registered himself at them all as unemployed and since skilfully evaded, on one excuse or another, taking such jobs as had been offered him.
The Party ticket he carried was evidence enough for the Communist members on the committees of the Branches to which he belonged that he was to be trusted, but to induce them actually to confide in and make use of him, he had lost no opportunity of putting himself forward at every meeting he attended as an active trouble-maker. It followed that the more conservative members of the branches had come to regard him as the type of hot-head who is a menace to regular employment and good relations with the bosses. The night before, on his leaving the meeting, three such anti-Communists had followed and later tackled him in an ill-lit street. They had charged him with being a 'professional out-of-work' and a 'bloody agitator' who wanted to see everyone else out of work in support of his Communist opinions. Then, while two of them had stood by, the third stalwart, a man with the build of a blacksmith, whom they referred to as 'good old Ed', had made him put his fists up and sailed into him.
As Barney was nowhere near the weight of his opponent, and in such circumstances pulling one of the fast tricks he knew was out of the question, he had had the sense to let himself be knocked down early in the encounter; so he had got off fairly lightly. Actually, too, he was more sorry for the man who had attacked him than for himself, since the two other men who had been present might talk about 'old Ed's' exploit; so he dared not refrain from reporting the affair to his Communist friends on the committee, which meant for certain that they would put 'old Ed's' name on their black list and, sooner or later, find an excuse to victimize him.
Mary, of course, knew nothing of all this, and she readily accepted Barney's story of the gambling joint, because it fitted in with the picture of him, as an unprincipled young roisterer, that she knew of old. After a moment, she remarked with a smile:
'See what comes of being one of the idle rich and staying up half the night to throw your money about.'
'Have a heart!' he protested. 'I'm only one of those poor Irish Earls who has to get his robes out of pop when there's a coronation. As for being idle, I spent hours and hours last week trying to persuade Civil Aircraft lines to run tourist flights to Kenya.' He then launched into an account of established flight schedules and the numbers of passengers carried, from information he had mugged up since last they had met, the better to establish his cover-story with her.
After a second cocktail they went up to the restaurant, and she told him about two model shows for which she had been booked in the coming week; but all the time she was wondering why he had not yet asked her about her meeting with Ratnadatta. At length the temptation to broach the subject proved too strong for her and she said, a shade coldly: 'It seems you are no longer interested in learning how I got on last night.'
He had deliberately refrained in order to pique her, and now he laughed. 'I guessed you were bursting to tell me; so I've been holding out on you. But to tell the truth I'm itching to hear, and near as damn it gave you best only a moment ago. How's the form for your becoming a pretty white nanny goat and me a big black toad?'
'In your case, pretty good,' she replied lightly, 'though you needn't flatter yourself I'd have you as my familiar. Last night Mr. Ratnadatta took me to a place in Chelsea and gave me dinner upstairs in a private room!'
'What!' he exclaimed. 'Of all the nerve! And you let him?'
'Why not? He is a nice little man, and extremely learned.'
'Nice little man, my foot!' Barney stuck his chin out aggressively. 'He's a smarmy no-good Babu. It was damned impertinent of him to take you to a place like that, and I'd like to kick his learned bottom.'
'Really Barney!' It was the first time she had used his Christian name, although he had asked her to when she had dined with him the previous Thursday. 'You sound as though you had only just climbed out of the bog. It's silly to take such a primitive view of it. He wanted to tell me about the secret doctrine and he couldn't do that in a restaurant with other people nearby who might overhear him.'
'Oh, all right then. What had he to say about it?'
For the best part of half-an-hour, between mouthfuls of food and wine, she gave him the highlights of Ratnadatta's discourse, and as they discussed them Barney had to agree that much of it made sense. Just after the main course they had chosen - a Hungarian goulash - had been served, he enquired: 'And when you had finished dinner, what happened then?'
She gave her sweetest smile. 'He took me to a Satanic temple.'
'The little swine! That's just what I feared he might do. Still, it seems you came to no harm, otherwise you wouldn't be looking so cheerful.'
'No; I enjoyed it. I found it absolutely fascinating.'
Barney was on the point of giving way to an outburst but, his duty coming uppermost in his mind, he checked it and asked, 'Whereabouts was this place?'
'I've no idea,' she replied lightly. 'He took me to and from it in a taxi, and both ways he insisted on putting a bandage over my eyes. Going there took a long time and for no very, good reason I got the impression that it was somewhere in north-east London. But I'm sure the distance we covered coming back was much shorter, and when he dropped me at Hyde Park Corner the taxi had just come up the slope from Knightsbridge; so it may be anywhere.'
'You must have seen something of it when you got out of the taxi. What was it like outside?'
'It was an old Georgian mansion with a high wall all round it, except for its front; and there it faced on to a semi-private courtyard. But it was in the heart of a slum district. That's all I can tell you.'
'That doesn't get us far. In a great area like London there must be dozens of derelict places like that in districts that have gradually deteriorated into slums.'
'Oh, but it wasn't derelict. Inside it was beautifully decorated, and furnished in keeping with its period.'
'That doesn't surprise me. Those sort of crooks have oodles of money. What happened after you arrived there?' . For a second Mary hesitated. She had not forgotten Ratnadatta's threat that he and his friends would know about it if she betrayed their secrets, and take steps to exact a grim penalty. But now that she had made up her mind to break with them, and would soon have lost touch with him altogether, she felt that she need no longer take serious notice of his threat. Besides, she was thoroughly enjoying Barney's reactions to the dangers she had courted and was tempted by the urge to see him becoming more wrought up on her account.
'Well,' she said, 'if I do tell you I must ask you to keep it to yourself. You see, I'm not supposed to speak about these people's doings to anyone, and if it leaked out that I had they might make trouble for me.'
'I fully appreciate that,' he nodded. 'So the last thing you need be afraid of is that
I'd let you down.'
'All right then. He took me up to a gallery where without being seen we could look down on the interior of the temple. There were about thirty men and women in it, all masked and wearing only gossamer-thin cloaks, through which one could see absolutely everything.'
Barney's face had become grim, and he muttered, 'That's more or less the kind of form I expected. But, damn it all, Margot! You mustn't let yourself get involved further in this sort of thing. You really mustn't!'
'I don't know.' She gave a shrug that implied sophisticated detachment. 'I haven't yet quite made up my mind. I wouldn't have missed this show last night for anything. By comparison, the sort of things one sees at Mrs. Wardeel's are child's play. Ratnadatta and his friends really can call down power, and I'm awfully tempted to go with him again next Saturday. It depends on whether I can screw up my courage to go through the initiation ceremony.'
'What form does it take? Something pretty beastly, I bet.'
'Not necessarily. But once in, I might be expected to take part in the, er - social activities of the Brotherhood.'
'I don't quite get you?'
'Well, Ratnadatta let me watch them do their serious stuff, but then he said that I'd seen quite enough for a first visit. Just as we were leaving they were about to sit down to a feast, and I've rather uneasy suspicions about the kind of fun and games they may have got up to afterwards.'
'Suspicions! Be your age, Margot! You'd get yourself raped for a certainty.'
She turned her big blue eyes on him with an innocent look. 'D'you really think so?�
'Of course I do! You mustn't even think of going to this place again. You've got nothing to offer them except your body, and that's what they're after. They might even dope and white-slave you. Let's hear now about what you did see - their serious stuff?'
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