'No, they might stage a convenient "accident".'
'That's what I'm afraid of; so I'm going to get the Special Branch to offer him police protection. The trouble is that he's as tough as they come, and such an independent minded cuss, that I doubt if he'll accept it. He'll probably take the view that it's preferable to run any risk there may be rather than let his supporters think he no longer has the nerve to face rough meetings without a couple of plain-clothes men tagging round with him.
At that moment the buzzer on the Colonel's desk sounded. Switching on the inter-com. he said, 'Yes . . . All right; put him through.' Then he picked up the telephone receiver. 'Verney here. Morning, Dick. Have you rung up to let me know that your baby left last night for London?'
After listening for a full minute, he spoke again. 'I see. Damn the man! If he was going to give way at all, why the hell couldn't he do as he was asked and come up here where Special Branch have everything laid on to pinch the two of them? This is going to be very different and damnably difficult to make watertight. If L. gave us the slip and got away across the moors with the formula it would be nearly as bad as O. himself sneaking out of the country and joining the Reds. I don't think we dare risk letting them meet the way they plan to now. On the other hand, if we lay in wait and pulled L. in, unless he had already received the goods from O, we could hold him only temporarily on some minor charge. For all we know, too, he may even have a diplomatic passport and we'd have to let him go right away. In either case, he'd soon be able to agree another rendezvous with O., and if you failed to find out about it we'd be sunk. Hang on a minute. Let me think.'
There was a longish pause, then Verney went on. 'Look, Dick. You know I've every faith in you, but it wouldn't be fair to throw the whole responsibility for a thing like this on your shoulders. I shall come down myself this afternoon. When I've fixed things up this end I'll send you a signal what time to expect me.'
When he had hung up, he turned to Barney and said: 'As you will have guessed, that was Forsby. For the past few nights Lothar has been working on Otto till he's nearly driven him off his rocker. Thursday night's tape recording disclosed that he had given in and agreed to come up and meet Lothar in London today. When Forsby got that yesterday morning, he naturally expected Otto to give notification that he was going on weekend leave. He warned his boys to be ready to tail Otto and got a signal ready to send me the moment Otto left the Station. But Otto didn't leave; he sat tight. Forsby supposed that he had changed his mind and decided to dig his toes in again after all. But that wasn't the case. The explanation emerged from last night's tape recording.'
C.B. knocked his pipe out, and went on. 'Apparently Lothar came through on their psychic wave about four o'clock this morning. He was doing a check up to make sure that Otto did not mean to let him down and, when he found that Otto was still there in Wales, he threatened to put a curse on him that would kill him. Otto protested that he had meant to come but had been prevented at the last moment. When he had gone to the top boy at the Station, Sir Charles Remmington-Rudd, to tell him that he meant to go to London for the week-end, Sir Charles had said he could not let him. A signal had just come in to notify them that an American egg-head was flying down that afternoon to spend a couple of nights at the Station. The Yank is a fuel expert and, as Otto is our star fuel boffin, he had to be there to do the honours.'
'I get it,' Barney put in. 'Otto realized that he dared not ignore his boss's order to stay put, as if he had they would have tumbled to it that there was something fishy about his trip to London. There would have been a hue and cry after him. We should have been alerted to pick him up this end and have him tailed. He saw himself being pinched when he kept his appointment with Lothar and, as he would have had the fuel formula on him, both of them would have been for the high jump.'
'Precisely. That's what he told Lothar. Whether Lothar thought he was lying or not we don't know. Anyway, he made it plain that he was not prepared to wait much longer. He indicated that, since the mountain would not come to him, he meant to go to the mountain. He demanded that Otto should select some lonely spot a few miles outside the Station, which it would be easy for him to find, and that he should meet him there with the formula on Sunday afternoon. Otto gave him as a rendezvous a place called Lone Tree Hill, and described its situation. Lothar said that he would be there sometime between two o'clock and four, and that Otto was to go there dressed in an old raincoat and beret, so that he would be easily recognizable from a distance. He added that, if Otto failed to turn up, or betrayed him afterwards, he would be dead in nine days. And that is that.'
Barney nodded. 'I don't wonder you are worried, Sir. It's going to be a tricky business to draw a cordon round an exposed hill-top without Lothar spotting what you are up to.'
'I know; but I may decide to intervene before they meet. Anyway, it's no good trying to settle on a plan before we've talked the whole thing over with Forsby.'
'We!' Barney echoed.
'Yes. As this business ties up with your Satanist Circle at Cremorne I'm taking you with me. I'm still hoping to be able to pull in and grill both these birds. If I can, something may emerge from what they say that will give you further light on this Indian you are after. The Research Experimental Station is right off the map; but it's got its own airstrip, so we can fly down. I believe they've got some sort of hook-up with Farnborough. I'll have my P.A. find out. Anyway, we'd better have a fairly early lunch and start immediately afterwards. Off you go now. Pack a bag and meet me at the Rag at a quarter to one.'
Barney did not argue. Annoyed as he was at having to cancel his plans for the evening, this was a matter of duty and his Chief had given him an order. He said only, 'Very good, Sir. See you at your Club at twelve-forty-five,' then left the room, went down in the lift, got a taxi and had himself driven to Warwick Square.
Having let himself into his flat he at once tried to telephone Mary, but there was no reply. As she was evidently out and might not return till lunch time, he rang up Constance Spry's, ordered a big bunch of roses to be sent to her by hand, and dictated a card to go with them. When he had finished packing, he wrote her a note saying how disappointed he was that he would not be seeing her over the week-end, but that he expected to be back on Monday and, unless he telephoned her to the contrary, would she please forgive him and go out with him that evening.
As they had agreed that, in the event of any trouble, she should ring him up, and she had not done so, he had no particular cause to be worried about her. On the way up to Pall Mall he posted his letter, then gave his mind to speculating on the strange business that was taking him down to Wales.
The roses were delivered to Mary some ten minutes after she got back from her week-end shopping. As she took them from their cellophane covering she was delighted but, when she read the card that accompanied them, her face fell sadly. It was in a young woman's rounded hand, so obviously not even written by Barney, and it said only, 'Terribly sorry to have to put you off tonight, but have to be out of London on urgent business over week-end. Love, B.'
She felt it to be the most shocking let down. For a moment she was near bursting into tears; but, swiftly, her self-pity was overcome by angry resentment. Like a fool - like a sentimental ninny -like some little teenager who had hooked her first beau - for the past three and a half days she had been almost counting the moments until she should see Barney again. She knew that he had no right to a title, felt certain that the Kenya story was a myth, and all he said about starting up a travel agency there a pack of lies; yet, even so, she had allowed him to sell himself to her again. Those merry brown eyes, the mop of thick dark curly hair, the spontaneous grin that so frequently lit up his brown, healthy face, had bewitched her into believing that he had become a different person from the man she had known five years before. He had played on her loneliness by giving her the only good times she had known since her husband's death, and played on her fears by insisting that she needed his protection.
Looking
back over the days since she had given him supper for the first time in her flat, she thought that she must have been out of her wits to accept without question his glib assertions that for eight out often evenings he had had long-standing engagements to dine with old friends. He had even left her on that excuse, after taking her down to Wisley the previous Sunday. To support himself he must have some sort of job, but no normal job entailed a man's having to leave London for the week-end at a moment's notice on a Saturday morning. The explanation was clear. He must have a mistress and quite probably was amusing himself with several other women. No doubt he had had a date with one of them on Sunday evening, and now quite unexpectedly one of them had let him know that morning that she was free to slip off for a week-end in the country with him. He had not changed by an iota, but was still the self-indulgent cynic who took his fun where he could find it and, for any woman who was not with him at the moment, it was a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'.
Angry and miserable, she ate her solitary lunch; but, by the time she finished it, she had decided that it was stupid to spend the rest of the day alternately fuming and moping. She would get out in the fresh air in the afternoon and go to a cinema in the evening.
Putting on her things she went out, walked down to the Earls Court Road, and took a bus to Wimbledon. A blustering wind was blowing which made it less pleasant than when she had last been there, but she strode determinedly across the Common and, after a two-hour walk, ate a hearty tea. By then the wind had dropped and a sunny evening bid fair to usher in good weather for early May, so she did not hurry home and it was getting on for seven o'clock when she got back to the Cromwell Road. Feeling much less depressed after her outing, she pushed open the front door of the house; and there, in the downstairs hall, she found Ratnadatta waiting for her.
CHAPTER XIII DEAD MEN'S SHOES
No steps having been taken by Ratnadatta to find out why she had failed to attend the last meeting at Mrs. Wardeel's had lulled Mary into a false sense of security; so suddenly to come upon him there was a most unpleasant shock. Her heart began to hammer wildly. Concealing her agitation as well as she could, she returned his 'Good evening'.
He had come to his feet and, fixing her with his round brown eyes, through the thick-lensed spectacles, he asked: 'Why haf you not come to Mrs. Wardeel's on Tuesday?'
In a voice that sounded firmer than she had expected, she replied: 'I couldn't. I ate something for lunch that day that upset me. It made me quite ill, and by the evening I was running a temperature.'
To her relief he did not appear to have detected that she was lying. Instead, he smiled his toothy smile and said: 'To hear that I am sorry. But I see you haf quite recovered. That ees good, very good; because I haf pleasant news for you. Soon now you are given the test weech ees the second stage towards your initiation.'
Mary strove to control her rising panic. Barney might be a rotten little twister, but he had convinced her that to have anything further to do with Ratnadatta would be asking for real trouble. She must get out of it somehow, give him the soft answer that turneth away wrath, then go into hiding before the date he had evidently come to make with her. Keeping her voice level she asked:
'When is it to be?'
'Why, tonight,' he replied in evident surprise that she had not understood that from what he had said. 'I telephone you this morning, I telephone you this afternoon, and both times you haf been out. So I come to fetch you. For this you receive instruction before the meeting. Perhaps we arrive a little early; but for me to go and come back for you in half-an-hour ees no point.'
'I... I've been out all day, and I'd like to change my clothes,' she faltered.
'It is unnecessary. You change at the Temple; bath too, if you wish. Come, plees, with me now.'
Desperately she sought in her mind for a way to get rid of him even for ten minutes so that she could make a bolt for it before he returned. But to say that she must go up to her flat before she went out was useless. He would wait for her down there in the hall. Yet she could think of nothing else.
Suddenly she remembered her crucifix. As Barney had suggested, she was carrying it in her handbag. He had been confident that using it would enable her to defy Ratnadatta. She must nerve herself to get it out, hold it in front of the Indian's face and order him to leave the house.
Opening her bag, she fumbled for it; but on looking down, her glance fell on the shoes Ratnadatta was wearing. They were of brown leather and hand-made; but, across the toe-cap of the left one, there was a dark scar that no amount of polishing had been able to remove.
Mary's downcast eyes dilated. For a moment they remained riveted upon the scarred toe-cap with the same fascinated horror that a bird's eyes are held by a snake.
'Come,' said Ratnadatta, a shade impatiently. 'There ees nothing for you to be frightened off. Why do you hesitate?'
Her fingers had found the crucifix but they did not grip it. With a supreme effort, she fought down an impulse to let her mouth open in a scream. She would have known anywhere the shoes that Ratnadatta had on. They had belonged to her dead husband.
Taking a sudden resolution, she withdrew her hand from the crucifix and closed her bag. Then, in a husky voice that belied her words, she said: 'I'm not frightened. It's only that I was not expecting you this evening. Let's get a taxi.'
Shoes had been one of Teddy's few extravagances. It had been his custom to have a pair made for him once a year by Lobb of St. James's Street, and this last pair had been spoiled by an infuriating accident. The second time he had had them on he had been putting a broken kitchen plate in the dustbin; the lid of the bin had dropped back unexpectedly, knocking the pieces of plate from his hand, and the largest had fallen on the toe-cap, making an inch-long gash across the highly glazed leather. She had polished the shoe afterwards a dozen times in the hope of working the scar out, but it remained as a dark streak that there was no disguising, so he had said that he would take the shoe back to Lobb's and have a new toe-cap put on. That had been about a month before his death, and during those last weeks his mind had been so pre-occupied with the work on which he was engaged that he had never done so. And now Ratnadatta was wearing those shoes.
It was the proof of what Mary had long suspected. Teddy had met his death at the hands of the Brotherhood of the Ram. More, it showed that Ratnadatta had been personally concerned in his murder. The Indian must have noticed that Teddy had about the same size feet as himself, suddenly coveted the pair of fine, almost new, handmade shoes and exchanged them for his own before Teddy's body had been taken down to the docks.
In another moment Mary would have drawn the crucifix from her bag and defied Ratnadatta, but this sudden revelation caused an immediate change in her mental attitude. Fear of what might happen to her if she involved herself further with the Brotherhood, and an increasing sense of the hopelessness of pitting her wits against such a powerful organization, had determined her to keep her promise to Barney, for his having let her down had no bearing on that; but now, her five weeks of anxious probing had suddenly brought results so definite that she could not possibly ignore them. In less than a minute, she had nerved herself afresh to take up once more her dangerous task. No matter what befell her, she must continue her association with the Satanists and worm her way into their confidence until she obtained the full story of Teddy's murder.
Still in a daze, she accompanied Ratnadatta out into the street and, after waiting a few minutes, they got a passing taxi. Her previous visits to the Temple had been after dark, but they were on their way there much earlier now and it was still daylight; so he turned to her and said:
'To blindfold you this evening would not be good. The taxi-man perhaps see and think something funny. Almost now you are one off us, so no great matter if you know where the Temple ees. Should you fail in test, then I hypnotize you and you forget place to weech you haf been taken. If your failure off test ees not too bad, perhaps you be permitted later to take a second time. But you will not fail. I ha
f full confidence.'
His words had the effect on Mary of a further shot of a stimulating drug. That she was to be allowed to know the whereabouts of the Temple came as a swift first payment for her renewed resolution to carry on with her dangerous mission. It determined her to face the test boldly and go through with it if she possibly could; so that afterwards there would be no question of depriving her of that valuable knowledge. But her mind was still half engaged on the shoes.
After Verney had broken the news of Teddy's death to her, Inspector Thompson of the Special Branch had called and informed her that he was conducting the official enquiry. She had given him all the help she could by making a long statement and, on two subsequent occasions before she left Wimbledon, he had come to the flat again to ask her further questions. On one of these he had told her that, in due course, Teddy's clothes would be returned to her but for the time being they wished to keep them at the Yard to complete various tests, and she had thought no more of the matter.
Now she realized that, had the clothes been sent back, or shown to her, she would at once have spotted that the shoes taken from Teddy's feet were not his own; whereas the police, having no reason to suppose that a substitution had taken place, must still be ignorant of that fact. It dawned on her then that not only did Ratnadatta's possession of Teddy's shoes indicate that he had been an accomplice in the murder; those that the police held were almost certain to be his and, if so, they constituted most damning evidence against him. They were a rope round his neck, and she now had only to let Colonel Verney know of her discovery for it to lead to the Indian's arrest.
This thought fired a train of new ones. She need not become a Sister of the Ram, after all. By another visit to the Temple she could have hoped only to pick up a hint. No one there would tell her what had actually happened to Teddy until they knew her well enough to trust her fully. To get that far she would have to submit to initiation and attend several more meetings. Even then she might not secure anything approaching such concrete evidence as was provided by this exchange of shoes. A merciful God had taken her will for the deed, sparing her the ordeal of debasing herself and participating in further horrible blasphemies. The job she had set herself to do was as good as done. She need not even go again to the Temple that evening - if only she could manage to get away from Ratnadatta.
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