Mary had never before seen an occultist project ectoplasm, and cause it to take on the likeness of human limbs or a rudimentary human body; so normally she would have been much impressed by the strange exhibition. But having, three nights before, witnessed the far more hair-raising spectacle of the Great Ram conjuring up a cloud of smoke that turned into a perfectly formed manikin capable of movement, although unattached to him, she found the long slow performance somewhat wearisome. Moreover, her mind was still on Barney and his failure to attend the meeting.
When they had last dined together, he had frankly declared his disbelief in the genuineness of the medium they had seen the week before, so she thought it possible that scepticism about Mrs. Wardeel's parties as a whole had decided him against giving any more of his evenings to attending them. But she was more inclined to believe that, feeling certain she would be there, he had refrained from coming so as to avoid any possibility of being drawn into a resumption of their, so far, most unsatisfactory, tentative moves towards entering on an affair.
Her disappointment was naturally proportionate to the hours she had given to musing over the way in which that evening she would make Barney take a much better view of her, and those she had spent in preparing that delightful little supper. But by the time the medium had re-absorbed his ectoplasm she had made herself face up to it that, if it was to avoid meeting her again that Barney had failed to attend this meeting, the odds were all against his coming to the one next week, so she would be wise to write him off for good and all.
When the party moved into the dining-room for coffee, Ratnadatta sidled up to her, gave his toothy smile and said in a low voice: 'Mrs. Mauriac, I haf another person with weech I wish to talk here tonight. But I also wish to talk with you. As it ees private matter, better that we talk in street; so plees I walk part off way home with you.'
His friendly greeting at first confirmed her belief that she had nothing to fear from him; but his words sent a sudden chill through her. Perhaps he did know that she had spoken of the Brotherhood to Barney. If so, his proposal to walk home with her suggested that he wanted to get her on his own in a situation where he could do her some injury. Then, after a moment, she dismissed the idea as highly improbable, and reassured herself with the thought that, anyway, he would not be such a fool as to attempt to harm her while walking through a respectable district at an hour when there would still be plenty of people about on whom she could call for help.
Taking her consent for granted, he had left her at once and quickly attached himself to a heavily made up, middle-aged woman, wearing valuable jewels, whom Mary had not seen there before, and he remained talking to her for the next twenty minutes. Meanwhile a retired General, who had singled Mary out on a previous occasion, brought her a coffee and sought to entertain her with an account of marvels he had seen Fakirs perform in India many years before she was born.
When the party began to break up, the bejewelled lady took herself off, Ratnadatta rejoined Mary, listened with her to a final story by the General, then tactfully prised her away from him. Five minutes later they were walking side by side towards the central stretch of the Cromwell Road, and he said:
'I haf forgot to tell you that when we meet on Saturday you must wear no make-up. None at all, you understand? Scrub your face clean. Also your hair must be done as plainly as possible, scrag back flat with ends done as bun at back off head.'
Mary gave him an astonished look, then faltered: 'As a matter of fact, Mr. Ratnadatta, I... I've been thinking things over and I... well, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really advanced enough to accept initiation yet.'
In turn he shot a surprised look at her. But his voice held no trace of anger as he replied: 'Initiation! You haf flatter yourself. At best some time must pass before you can hope for so much. First stage ees neophyte. Acceptance on probation only, after taking oath of loyalty to the Brotherhood. Next the neophyte must perform some act for token off willing service. ...'
He had been about to go on, but she cut in quickly, 'Do you mean that in the case of a woman it is then that she performs her service to the temple by, er- offering herself to a stranger?' 'No, no.' He shook his head. 'That does not come until initiation. It ees part off the initiation rite. By act off willingness I refer to performing satisfactorily some work for furtherance off aims off the Brotherhood weech the neophyte is giffen order to do by our High Priest Abaddon. Only by passing such test does a neophyte become qualified for initiation.'
They walked the next fifty yards in silence, while Mary was thinking, 'It looks, then, as if I could go with him again to the Temple next Saturday without having anything much to be afraid of. If they had designs on me the last thing they would want is for me to do my hair up in a bun and make myself look like a scarecrow. And it would give me one more chance to see if I can learn from them anything about Teddy.' Yet caution urged her to try to find out a little more before committing herself; so aloud she asked: 'What exactly would I have to do to be accepted as a neophyte?�
'I haf already tell you,' he replied a shade impatiently. 'You promise obedience to our High Priest and take oath to keep secrets off the Brotherhood. Then you are welcomed and well-wished by all present and ceremony is concluded. The rite takes only a quarter-of-an-hour - perhaps twenty minutes.'
'And afterwards?' she enquired.
'Why, as you are not initiate, you must go home, off course. I take you again to Hyde Park Corner. You wait then two, three, perhaps four weeks, till occasion arise when Abaddon has use for you, and requires from you token act off willing service.'
'What would happen if I failed in that?'
'You would haf lost your chance to become initiate. Most regrettable; for whatever you may feel yourself, I know you to be ready for advancement. But there ees no reason why you should fail. The task provided ees always suitable for the neophyte to weech it ees given.'
Now that he had made it clear to her beyond all question that she must still pass through two preliminary stages before having finally to commit herself, she felt very differently about the matter from the way she had on getting home from her visit to the Temple the previous Saturday night. The thought of the long empty days and lonely evenings that lay ahead of her played their part, and once more there rose in her the urge to try to find out about Teddy.
'Very well, then,' she said impulsively. 'To be honest, I was a bit scared and meant to back out. But I don't mind going through this short ceremony if I am to be given plenty of time to get used to the thought of facing the big one. So I'll meet you as we arranged on Saturday.'
'Good; very good,' said Mr. Ratnadatta.
CHAPTER IX A FIENDISH PLOT
The following morning, while Mary was disconsolately making a late breakfast of the Westphalian ham she had bought as a first dish for the supper at which she had planned to entertain Barney, Colonel Verney was already in his office hard at work sorting the papers in his 'In' tray. On the previous Monday he had had to attend a N.A.T.O. conference in Naples; so he had flown down to Nice on Friday night, in order to spend the weekend with his wife, gone on to Naples and got back only the night before. He had found Molly in good form and had thoroughly enjoyed relaxing among the orange trees and oleanders in the garden of their villa. Such breaks he knew to be a sound insurance against strain from overwork but, all the same, they had to be paid for on his return by an accumulation of matters requiring his attention.
Putting the longer documents aside he dealt first with letters needing a prompt answer; then, having sent his secretary off to type them, he got down to an hour's reading of reports. Among them there was one from Squadron-Leader Forsby. In a brief letter he said only that Otto Khune's behaviour during the past week had continued much as before and as yet gave no grounds for suspicion that he was communicating with any questionable person. But sometime during the week he had completed the account of his past, and a copy of it, which had been taken after a further search of his quarters, carried out when he was absen
t from the Station on Sunday, was enclosed. Spreading out the typescript, Verney read:
It was in May 1950 that, after an interval of eight years, I again saw my brother Lothar. I was at the time living with my wife Dinah at Farnborough, and engaged, as an official of the Ministry of Supply, in tabulating the results of new fuels then being tested at the Experimental Aircraft Establishment there.
We occupied a pleasant little house on the outskirts of the town, had made a number of friends in the neighbourhood, and our life was a very happy one until, early in May, I began to be plagued by constant thoughts of Lothar.
For a long time past, thoughts of him had come to me only infrequently. I was aware, although it had never been confirmed as a fact by a communication from him or any other source, that he was in the U.S.S.R., and now content to carry on his scientific work there under his Russian masters in one of their research establishments. It distressed me that he should be working for the Communists, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I had come to accept it that, as our paths in life had diverged so widely, it was unlikely that we should ever meet again.
Yet, having once more started to think about him, try as I would I could not get him out of my mind. In fact, I became the victim of a mental disturbance of the same nature as that I have suffered recently. I found that I could no longer concentrate fully on my work or take pleasure in the social life that my wife and I had been leading. Then too, as now, I gradually became convinced that Lothar was in England and wished to see me.
My visions of him increased in clarity until I became familiar with the surroundings in which he was living. He had two rooms on the ground floor of a rather shoddy apartment house. It was number 94, in a long dreary street which I knew to be in North London somewhere beyond St. Pancras Station. The next development was my becoming aware of the way to find it on starting from the Station, and that Lothar was willing me to come there to meet him.
I knew instinctively that no good could come from such a meeting; so for some days I resisted the urge to go there. But Lothar gave me no peace; and both Dinah and my fellow employees at the research station became greatly alarmed by my mental condition. They said that at times I talked as if I were a different person, and urged me to see a doctor.
To have done so would have been futile. Medical science now accepts telepathy, but I doubt if any doctor would have believed my story and, even if he had, it would have been beyond his power to help me. The probability is that he would have had me put into a mental home, if only for a period of observation, and, as that could have brought me no relief, I were not prepared to submit to it.
At length, towards the end of the month, on May 26, to be exact, I decided that, if I was not to lose my job owing to a complete breakdown, I must give way to Lothar's urging. So I took the day off and went up to London.
From St. Pancras I had no difficulty in finding the street in which Lothar had his rooms, and it proved in all respects precisely the same as I had seen it in my visions. On going up the steps of No. 94, I saw that the front door was ajar. Walking in I entered the first room on the right. As I had felt certain he would be, he was sitting there and expecting me.
To begin with, my fears that such a meeting would bring misfortune on myself were stilled, because he greeted me with great affection; and few people can exercise more charm than Lothar when he is in a mood to do so. I learned that he had periodically overlooked me and so had followed the outline of my career just as I had his. He had known of my marriage and that I had left the United States to settle in Britain, and was aware of the type of work that I was then employed upon; and he confirmed my belief that he had gone by way of South America to Germany, been captured by the Russians at Peenemunde and later reconciled himself to continuing his scientific research on rocket development under the Soviet Government.
It was this, he admitted frankly, that had been his main reason for not having got into touch with me openly, as he had entered Britain by clandestine means and, to minimize the risk of being found out, left his lodging only when the mission he had come upon necessitated his doing so. His other reason was that, since we still resembled one another so closely, it would have been impossible for him to conceal the fact that he was my twin and, as I had no doubt told my wife that he had deserted the Allied cause during the war, for him to have turned up at Farnborough might have greatly embarrassed me.
He produced a bottle of wine, and over it we talked for a long while about our youth in Chicago and our devotion to one another in those days, then of the lives we had made for ourselves in Russia and Britain respectively. From what he told me it was clear that upper-crust scientists fared far better there than here. We were then thirty-two years of age and he was already receiving an emolument in the form of excellent accommodation, transport, holiday, and priority goods vouchers which, added to his cash salary, enabled him to live at a standard that, with British taxation at its present level, I could never hope to equal.
It was this which led me to make some remark to the effect that not only had the men in the Kremlin abandoned all attempts to make the Marxist ideology work in practice, but they were deliberately creating a new aristocracy with such cynical disregard for even a semblance of equality that Britain's Welfare State brought her much nearer to being a Communist society than the revolution had Russia.
He entirely agreed, remarking that true Communism could never work in any country and, realizing that, although they could not openly admit it, the men in the Kremlin had, in fact, become Nazis. It was that which made him willing and happy to work for them. He went on to say that he still believed the Hitler doctrines to be the only ones by which, in the modern world, the masses could be made to work the hours they should and be controlled effectively; that, by the application of those doctrines, power could be concentrated in a few hands in a way that was impossible in the democracies, and that power ultimately used to establish a world order - call it Communism or anything else one liked - ruled over by a single governing body.
When that day came, he declared with complete self-confidence, he meant to be a member of it - and it would not be many years in coming. The Western Powers could not compete effectively in the armaments race because the expenditure of their governments was limited by the reluctance of the voters, to whom they had to go, cap in hand, to retain power, to provide sufficient money; and as each of them, again at the dictation of these masses, had to place the individual interests of their countries before those of maintaining a united front, capitalist-democracy was doomed. Innumerable jealousies and divergent policies inherited from the past could be made afresh into bones of contention and played up into serious national issues, which would keep them from ever combining wholeheartedly; so, one way and another, when Russia struck they would be incapable of mobilizing even a third of their potential strength against her.
Power, he contended, was the only thing really worth haying. And what could equal playing a part in decreeing the way of life to be followed by the whole human race when the new World State was established? He meant to do so, and out of his old affection for me he wished me to share his exalted station.
It then transpired that the object of his visit, which was being kept secret even from all but one high official at the Soviet Embassy, was to take me back to Russia with him. He said that immediate employment could be arranged for me with a remuneration which would enable me to enjoy many luxuries that I could not afford here, and that if I wished it my wife could be brought over later to join me. But that was only the beginning of the programme. He was already well on the way up the ladder to political power and in due course would have a special use for me. What exactly that was, he would not specify; but it hinged upon the fact that, as identical twins, once I became fluent in Russian we could easily pass for one another.
Even while he was still describing this, apparently, alluring prospect to me, I had made up my mind to refuse. Quite apart from the fact that I believe enslavement and the destructio
n of individuality, which is the policy of the Soviet Government, to be the most evil fate that could befall mankind, and that I am a loyal British subject with a deep sense of gratitude for the freedom and security I enjoy as a naturalized citizen of this country, I was not in the least tempted to accept temporary affluence as the price of the uncertainties of aiding him in his political career in Russia. Brilliant as I knew Lothar to be, there could be no guarantee that his ambitions would not bring him up against some, perhaps, less gifted but more powerful rival; then, as there were plenty of examples to show, it would need only one slip by him on some interpretation of Marxist doctrine for us both to land up in Siberia, or even find ourselves facing a firing squad.
On my declining his proposal he tried sweet reason and, exerting all his charm and will-power, argued with me for over an hour. Then, finding that I still stood firm, his manner changed and he began to threaten me. He said that secret plans he had made for the furtherance of his ambitions could not be carried out unless he had a double to appear in his stead on certain important occasions and that, as I was the only person who could pass as himself without question, like it or not I had got to return to Russia with him.
When I still refused he issued an ultimatum. He gave me three days in which to think it over and said that, if by the third day I did not come to him again prepared to do as he wished, he would give me no further chance but bring about my ruin.
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