by Dion Fortune
Brangwyn looked at him sharply. ‘You have read along these lines a good deal already, haven’t you?’ he inquired.
‘No, I’ve never read anything. I never knew they existed till you began to tell me about them. I picked up that bit from the classics at school. I only piece two and two together. All sorts of bits and scraps start coming back to you, that you never knew the meaning of before, when once you have a bit to go on. This sort of thing’s all round you if you only know what to look for.’
‘Yes,’ Brangwyn continued. ‘Ursula was a pretty high-grade pythoness till she got messed up; and a pythoness is to an ordinary medium what a medium is to ordinary mortals.
‘Well, as luck would have it, young Fouldes, who was interested in these matters, used to come along for talks, and to lend a hand in the experiments, and finally became my secretary, and he and Ursula got fond of each other. It’s no reflection on Ursula’s taste and judgment to say that, for what he is now is very different to what he was then. I was not averse from the affiance, though I cannot say I was exactly enthusiastic over it, for I thought Ursula was capable of better things.
‘I had only one thing against the boy — he had a nice disposition, was intelligent, was well-blessed with this world’s goods — but, and this is one of the biggest buts in the world, Murchison, he was exceedingly impressionable. Ursula could put him round her little finger; so could I; so could anybody; so, in the end, did Astley.
‘There are certain things that can be done with the mind if you know how, which give some very remarkable results, but which require a very steady nerve and considerable self-control to pull off successfully. Ursula wanted me to let Frank and her do some of these. Now I would have trusted Ursula to do the job; in fact, it was one of my hopes that she should try out that experiment for me when a suitable occasion came along; but Frank couldn’t, and I wouldn’t risk it, and Ursula and I had a quarrel over it. She, being in love, did not agree with my temperate estimate of Frank and his capacities.
‘Frank, not being taken at his own valuation, which was never unduly low, and had gone up considerably since he had had Ursula to tell him how wonderful he was, naturally wasn’t very pleased either, and ceased to regard me as guide, philosopher and friend, and took up with Hugo Astley, who is a considerably more spectacular person than I am, and both he and Ursula kept me in the dark over the matter, though I will say for Ursula that, knowing what she did about the man, she was all for keeping at a safe distance. Frank assured her that this was what he intended to do, and that he had no intention whatsoever of getting into Astley’s clutches; but he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon, and the inevitable happened; Astley, having touched Frank’s little finger, drew his whole body after him, and he ended up as you see him now.’
‘I am a bit surprised that you think Fouldes a lightweight,’ said Murchison. ‘The first thing that struck me about him was the tremendous personality he had. Not pleasant, I grant you, but mighty strong of its kind.’
‘That also is Astley’s work. Fouldes is burning under a forced draught, and it won’t last long. No constitution can stand that pressure.’
‘Drugs?’ queried Murchison.
‘Partly. And partly certain kinds of psychological practices that Astley teaches.
‘But, to continue my story, for I want to get on with it as quickly as possible, so that you may know where you are before the next move takes place, as it will before long, if I’m not very much mistaken.
‘Astley took Fouldes in hand, and developed him hand over fist in a way I would never have risked doing with a man of Frank’s make-up.’
‘Then there are other people as well as you working along these lines?’ interrupted Murchison.
Brangwyn hesitated for a moment, and then decided on frankness.
‘Ever heard of the occult fraternities?’
‘I’ve heard of the Rosicrucians.’
‘We’ll name no names; but, anyway, you know that people do organize for the study of the kind of thing I’m interested in, and that there is a secret tradition and a lot of unpublished manuscripts on the subject?’
‘I thought all that sort of thing was extinct, like the Comte de St Germain and Paracelsus.’
‘It is very far from being extinct. London, Paris, New York, Berlin — are full of all sorts and conditions of organizations experimenting and researching, and playing about generally with the Unseen. Mostly they are just mutual admiration societies, and the only credentials required are credulity and a vivid imagination. But some are like the one run by Hugo Astley, and that is an altogether different pair of boots.’
‘What do they go in for? Blackmail? Drugs? A spot of loose living?’
‘All those, and more, with a dash of subversive politics thrown in sometimes. No, the thing that entitles organizations like Astley’s to our consideration, if not our respect, is their knowledge of certain of the rarer powers of the human mind. And that knowledge is genuine, Murchison. There is no fake about it. I’ll tell you what it is, and I’ll show you how it’s done if you work with me.’
‘Are you planning an exposé?’
‘What’s the use? Astley’s been exposed over and over again. Exposure is what he thrives on. So much free advertisement. No one who mixes up with Astley nowadays can plead ignorance of what they are doing. Besides, an exposure would only drag Ursula’s name in the mud. No, I mean to fight him with his own weapons, get Ursula away from him, anyway, and lay him out once and for all if I can.
‘Astley couldn’t get hold of Ursula direct, I’ll say that for her. But he taught Fouldes some Voodoo tricks that he got from his Negro grandmother, and Fouldes tried them out, and pretty soon he had Ursula on a string, and then Astley pulled the end of that string, and Ursula was in his hands.’
‘What did he want her for? The usual?’
‘Yes, and no. No, not quite the usual, though I have no doubt that would not have been entirely overlooked. Ever heard of the Black Mass?’
‘Was that the game? But what exactly is the Black Mass? They desecrate the Host, don’t they? What had she got to do with it?’
‘Know what the altar is in a Black Mass?’
‘No, what is it?’
‘The body of a woman.’
‘Jerusalem!’ said Murchison, ‘and what happens to the woman?’
‘Astley’s wife is in an asylum. So you will naturally understand I was not anxious for Ursula to participate in any Black Masses. But things had been done to her soul that couldn’t be dealt with simply. You remember what I told you about those down-rushes of power in the divine inebriation? Well, Ursula had been used for that purpose, and used pretty roughly, too, not in the way it should be done.’
‘So this is magic, is it?’ said Murchison quietly, his face an expressionless mask.
‘I define it as the practical application of a knowledge of the little-understood powers of the human mind.’
‘Is this the technique you spoke of?’
‘Yes, Murchison, it is. Do you dislike the idea?’
Murchison thought it over for the best part of a cigarette. ‘Can’t say I like it,’ he said at length.
This was a setback for Brangwyn, and a serious one. ‘There is nothing but the use of these little-understood powers that will put Ursula on her feet.’
‘Maybe; but she ought never to have got into this condition.’
‘She never would have if she had stuck to me and steered clear of Astley. If a drug is active enough to do any good, it is always capable of doing damage in an overdose. Don’t you differentiate between Black Magic and White Magic?’
‘Afraid I don’t. It all seems pretty murky to me.’
‘I am trying to get in touch with the spiritual forces that built the universe so that I may be part of evolving life. Astley is trying to use them for his own ends. Working on his formula, Frank swells up like a bull-frog and Ursula is like a sucked orange. Working on my formula, they would have been the positive and negative pol
es of a battery, generating current, which would be an intensification of life n all its levels.’
‘And what do you want me to do?’
‘I want to go back and repeat the experiment up to the point it went wrong, and so get Ursula back in circuit with cosmic force again, so that she can charge up, for at the moment she is like a run-down battery.’
‘You mean you want to work the Black Mass?’
‘Good God, no, my dear fellow, what do you take me for? No, I should like to teach you the technique I would have taught Fouldes if he’d been any use, and let you and Ursula work together. If she once gets interested again, she’ll soon pick up. Are you game for the experiment?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ said the cautious Murchison, ‘I’m game for it as far as I can see it.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Ursula Brangwyn continued in the same drowsy, dazed condition throughout the evening, and could not be persuaded to eat. Brangwyn sent Murchison off to bed early. ‘Get some sleep while you can,’ he said. ‘We may have trouble before morning.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘Fouldes and Astley may try to come through to Ursula telepathically, and there will be the devil to pay if they do. That is when I shall want you to lend me a hand.’ Murchison acquiesced, though it seemed odd to him that Brangwyn could not hold his sister down singlehanded. To go to bed was one thing, but to go to sleep after all the happenings of the day proved to be quite another matter, and Murchison lay awake and smoked a cigarette. The business in which he had become involved was a decidedly odd one, and it was only his complete trust in his employer which made him willing to lend himself to it. To Murchison Brangwyn represented the ideal of perfect manhood, developed and balanced in all its parts. Just as he had worshipped him as a boy, so he respected him as a man. This business with Miss Brangwyn was a queer one. It was not usually considered a desirable thing for an employee to get into sympathetic rapport with his employer’s womenfolk, and he wondered that that aspect of the thing had not struck Brangwyn, who was quite as much a man of the world as a student of strange sciences. He also wondered what would happen when the time came to sever the rapport. He felt that he would be wise to look out for himself, and not get too deeply involved in the business.
Finally he came to the end of his cigarette and reluctantly turned out the light and settled down to sleep.
It seemed to him that he had hardly turned over when he was aroused by the ringing of the telephone bell in the next room. He leaped out of bed and answered it.
‘I’d be glad if you’d Come down and lend me a hand,’ came Brangwyn’s voice at the other end. ‘The expected has happened.’
Murchison pulled his old trench-coat over his shoulders, and went down bare-footed. The first person he encountered at the foot of the stairs was Miss Brangwyn, as wide awake as she had previously been drowsy.
She was in a dressing-gown of deep rose-pink silk, the same colour as her eiderdown, he remembered, and her hair hung in two long plaits down her back. Brangwyn was fully dressed, and had apparently not been to bed.
‘We’re going to have some coffee,’ said Brangwyn, ‘and we thought you might like to join us.’
‘Yes, rather,’ said Murchison, wondering what was afoot, and waiting for his cue. He saw a saucepan of milk warming on an electric hot-plate in the hearth.
‘Keep an eye on the milk, will you,’ said Brangwyn, and disappeared into the dining-room.
Murchison, knowing that it was more than the milk that he was expected to keep an eye on, wrapped the trench-coat round him and strapped the belt securely. He saw Miss Brangwyn watching him.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been let in for all this,’ she said.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he answered. ‘I’m only too glad to do anything I can.’
At that moment the milk came to the boil, and he hastily snatched it off the hot-plate. Slowly and clumsily he poured the milk into the cups, his huge hands seeming far too big for everything they got hold of.
‘Won’t you let me tuck you up on the sofa again?’ he said to the girl. ‘You’ll get cold, wandering about the room like that.’
Meekly she lay down on the big chesterfield in front of the fire, and he put the rug over her. She was evidently not going to play him up, as she had been doing with her brother.
He was just reaching out his hand towards the tray of cups when he felt a sudden cold draught of air stirring in the room, as though a door had opened somewhere, and at the same time there came upon his soul a sense of panic fear, as if in the presence of intense but intangible evil. He felt the short hairs on his neck beginning to rise.
‘My God, what’s that?’ he exclaimed involuntarily.
He saw that Ursula Brangwyn was sitting upright on the sofa, looking about her with terrified eyes.
He recognized intuitively that the evil was of the same kind, only infinitely stronger, than the unpleasant personal magnetism that had radiated from Fouldes as he stood in be door of the railway carriage looking at Ursula.
He reached out his hand to the girl.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We meet this standing up.’
She rose instantly from the couch and together they faced in the direction from which the force appeared to be emanating. The influence seemed to be coming in waves, with pulsations within the wave, dying down for a moment between them, and then coming up again with renewed vigour. Unconsciously Murchison had gripped the girl by her shoulders and turned her to face the force that was coming at them. It was so tangible that it was difficult to believe that there was nothing physical about it.
Gradually the influence weakened, became uncertain, and then faded altogether. They relaxed their tenseness, and Ursula dropped down on the sofa. Murchison sat down beside her feet, and, without realizing what he did, took her hand in his, and they sat thus staring at each other without speaking.
‘You felt it, too?’ said the girl at length.
‘I should think I did! What was it?’
‘Hugo Astley; telepathing, you know. It was much, much too strong for Frank.’
‘Whatever it was, it was darned unpleasant. Well, anyway, let’s shove it behind us. The less you think about that sort of thing, the better. Drink your coffee and forget about it.’
Brangwyn returned with a tray of sandwiches and they chatted quietly of anything and everything but the recent disturbances, and Brangwyn observed that Ursula looked much more normal and Murchison seemed almost jolly, which was something decidedly new in his usually rather glum employee.
He was just thinking of suggesting a general return to their respective beds when he saw Murchison suddenly cock his ears, as it were, and stare into space over Ursula’s head. The girl gazed at him, startled, for a moment, and then she, too, turned her head and looked in the same direction. Then Brangwyn also caught it, and felt the waves of evil influence come rolling in, banked and double-banked.
He was experienced in dealing with such things, and the waves divided and swept past him like the tide round a pier. But there was nothing he could do for the other two. This was not the time to give instructions that might be half-understood, and therefore muddled. It was best to leave Murchison to his unaided wits. The girl he could do nothing for. She had passed out of his reach on the tides of the force as if water had whirled her away. Her face had taken on the unnatural calmness of the face of the dead, all the moulding that gives character even to an unlined face being smoothed out. It was almost the face of an imbecile — utterly mindless. What possible chance was there that he — Murchison — or anyone — could reach her and touch her in that condition? She rose slowly from the couch, Murchison staring helplessly at her. Brangwyn saw at once that the strong rapport that had been between them earlier in the evening had broken and that Ursula had gone from Murchison just as much as she had gone from him.
Murchison turned and looked at him helplessly, as if asking for instructions. But that was not what he wanted. He wanted Murchis
on to act from intuition. For there was only one thing to do with the girl, and if it were not done spontaneously, it was worth very little.
But Murchison, alas, would not do things on his own initiative in his employer’s presence, thus forcing Brangwyn to take the lead.
‘Go after her,’ he said, ‘and see she does not bump into anything and hurt herself. She is sleep-walking.’
Obediently Murchison rose and set off after Ursula; but the girl’s smooth, gliding walk was covering the ground faster than he had realized, and before he could reach her she had walked straight into one of the pillars supporting the gallery, the crack of her head on the sharp-edged wood resounding through the room. She recoiled dazed, her hand pressed to her bruised face and an expression of bewildered pain in her eyes, and Murchison, without realizing what he did, caught her in his arms, cursing himself for the ineptitude that had allowed this mishap to occur. She looked up into his face with the startled expression of a child waking from sleep on unfamiliar surroundings.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ said Murchison, stroking her shoulder, oblivious of the silent watcher on the hearthrug. The girl gazed up at him dreamily out of her dilated eyes, her attention apparently distracted from what had previously held it with a hypnotic fascination; but gradually the other influence re-asserted itself, and she began to turn sideways in his arms and look over her shoulder. Her hand clutched the folds of his trench-coat in a convulsive grasp as she peered behind her, and she clung to him as if she had suddenly found herself on the edge of a precipice.
Murchison found himself staring in the same direction, but there was nothing to be seen. Ursula Brangwyn was looking into another dimension. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked and ticked as they stood thus, motionless, the silk and swansdown dressing-gown against the grimy khaki of the trench-coat. Brangwyn began to wonder if the man also were succumbing to the influence of the hypnotic force that was being used so effectually on the girl.
Slowly Ursula began to disengage herself from his arms, and the spell was broken.