by Dion Fortune
‘I don’t care if she drops off where it doesn’t stop,’ said Murchison, ‘so long as she doesn’t hang around the flat.’
Astley looked at him sharply. ‘You don’t seem to fancy her much,’ he commented.
‘I don’t mind her,’ said Murchison, ‘but it’s a nuisance having her hanging about the flat.’
‘Do you know what I think?’ said Astley. ‘I think that they’ve got designs on you, Brangwyn and that Morgan le Fay sister of his.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Murchison sharply, startled by Astley’s shrewdness.
‘Brangwyn dabbles in some pretty queer quarters of some pretty queer arts, and, as for that sister of his, she’s a first-class vampire. Literally, I mean, not just metaphorically. They mean to feed her on you, I think.’
Murchison shrugged. ‘I don’t need any chaperoning in that quarter.’
‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that, if I were you. If I wanted to work the Mass of the Bull with Ursula Brangwyn, you’re the exact type I’d choose, and I’ll bet Brangwyn spotted it. Know what the Mass of the Bull is, that they used to celebrate in Crete? The origin of the Minotaur legend?’
‘No, ‘fraid I don’t?’
Astley told him, and he did not mince his words. Murchison opened his mouth indignantly to repudiate Astley’s conception, and then shut it again hastily. ‘Well, I am pretty certain that nothing would induce the girl to have any truck with me. Anything she fancied would have to come out of the top drawer. To be perfectly frank with you, Mr Astley, she treats me as if I were a waiter.’
Astley’s ear was quick to catch the note of resentment that had crept into Murchison’s voice unawares.
‘If I were in your shoes, my lad, I’d soon disillusion her. They tried it on once before, you know, with young Fouldes. But he couldn’t hold her. Too much of a Nancy-boy. Now you’re just the right type.’
Murchison felt himself going the colour of a beet. ‘I can’t stand the damned girl!’ he snarled.
Astley laughed shamelessly. ‘And are you quite sure you don’t attract the girl?’
‘Absolutely sure. Haven’t I told you she treats me like a waiter?’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Astley, looking genuinely disappointed. ‘I should have like to have seen that experiment come off, even if I didn’t have a hand in it. Look here, I’m going to let you into the know. I’ve taken a fancy to you. It was all fixed up for Ursula and Fouldes to work the Mass of the Bull, when Brangwyn poked a stick into the works. Now, I’ve been helping Fouldes, teaching him a thing or two, and I think we’ll be able to land that girl in the near future. You’d be a much better partner for her in the Mass than Fouldes. If I give Fouldes the push will you take it on? You’ll have an exceedingly interesting experience, and you’ll land a girl with money.’
‘I dunno about that. I’ve other fish to fry. It’ll have to be made worth my while.’
‘I can make it worth your while all right,’ said Astley. ‘We will drop in on the girl unexpectedly when she’s alone, and use force if necessary. She’ll be amenable enough when once she’s been broken in.’
‘How’ll you manage to get her alone? Her brother looks after her like a cat at a mousehole.’
Astley winked. ‘She’s a young woman who’s fond of being alone. Goes for long walks, and all that. As a matter of fact’ — he dropped his voice to a whisper — ‘Fouldes is up in Wales now, watching his chance. He’ll do your dirty work for you, and as soon as he brings her back to my house I’ll give him the push and send for you. I’ll make it worth your while, you needn’t worry about that. And, anyway, you’ll have a bit of fun.’
Brangwyn, glancing up from his desk, found his secretary standing over him, looking like a storm-god, and saw that something had struck him on the raw and roused him from his Achilles-sulks. In a few curt words Murchison told his news. Brangwyn, staring at him, saw that he was simmering like a kettle coming to the boil.
‘This is an ugly business,’ said Brangwyn.
‘Ugly, do you call it?’ cried Murchison, and supplied an amended version that came straight from the gutter. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ he demanded at length, when he had recovered his breath, and Brangwyn had stopped blinking.
‘The first thing I am going to do,’ said Brangwyn quietly, looking at his enraged lieutenant, ‘is to sit down and think it out. This is a problem that requires strategy, not force, and we have got to lay out our plan of campaign very carefully, because Ursula is not to be relied on. For two pins she would go over to the enemy.’
‘What do you mean? Go to Fouldes? She’s scared to death of him. She’d run a mile at the sight of him.’
‘Are you sure of that? Did she run at the sight of him, or did she cower down helplessly?’
‘She cowered all right. She went absolutely flat. But I should have said that nothing would have induced her to look at the fellow of her own free will.’
‘Murchison, if there were only Fouldes to reckon with I would not worry, but Fouldes has Astley behind him, and Astley knows more about the rarer aspects of hypnosis than any man in Europe. I know a good deal about it, but I can’t hold a candle to Astley. And I don’t know that I particularly want to. There is a price that has to be paid for certain aspects of that knowledge that I am not sure that I should care to pay.’
‘Well, what do you propose to do about it? Sit down and let him land her?’ Murchison looked so truculent that Brangwyn began to fear that if he did not take action forthwith he would get his own head punched.
‘Look here, sit down and write Astley a letter pretending to play into his hands. That, and his reply, may be a piece of evidence that will be useful to us. Moreover, it will give you a foothold in his precious establishment that may come in handy.’
Murchison took a fountain-pen out of his pocket and Brangwyn produced heavy, embossed notepaper from a cabinet.
‘Dear Mr Astley,’ dictated Brangwyn, and Murchison laboriously scrawled it down in sprawling, unformed longhand.
‘I have been thinking over our talk this morning, and although I don’t see much chance of getting hold of the papers you want while B. is at the flat, I may be able to do so if he is away for a bit, and I believe he is going away shortly. If you can wait till then I will have a shot at it.’
Murchison raised his head. ‘Let’s put the result of my bargaining in. Shall I say “No results, no pay, but cash on delivery”?’
‘Right you are,’ said Brangwyn, and Murchison scrawled it down.
‘With regard to the girl,’ continued Brangwyn, ‘I’m game for anything I’m paid for, except to actually marry her, and I can’t do that because— What was it you said to him?’
‘Because I have other fish to fry,’ said Murchison.
‘That’s right, put that in. Your usual signature, and whatever ending you feel to be appropriate.’
‘“Yours affectionately,” I don’t think!’ said Murchison, concluding his scrawl.
‘Make a copy of that,’ said Brangwyn, ‘and get it off to him.’
Murchison scribbled a copy in pencil on another sheet of Branwyn’s best notepaper. ‘And now,’ he said in a firm voice, ‘what are we to do about Ursula?’
‘There is only one thing to do, get down to her as quickly as possible. I think the best way would be to use my car. It’s pretty high-powered, and it’s all main-road running till you get into the mountains, and we will need it if we want to get Ursula away quietly and quickly.’
Murchison went off to his own quarters to collect his old trench-coat. He clapped an ancient slouch hat on his head, and slipped quietly out of the house and went round to the garage, where his employer had already got the car out and started her up. Murchison looked at the long, lean bonnet of the two-seater, and saw that she was a thoroughbred. He took her out into the traffic of the Gray’s Inn Road, moving gingerly in second, feeling her jump at the slightest touch on the accelerator.
Presently they turned into the long road
that goes on and on and on till it stops at the sea-wall of Holyhead, and Murchison, now quite at home with the car, began to fling the miles over his shoulder.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ursula Brangwyn set out for a walk in glorious sunshine over a high path used only by shepherds when moving their flocks from one mountain pasture to another. It was the only way out from the little valley in which the farm lay, unless one were to go down a steep and rock-bound track that led in half a mile or so to the main road. The path made its way up a steep couloir and came out on to the top of a ridge, one flank of which fell away in precipices to the pass, and the other sloped steeply to the south, with a far-off glimpse of the sea. The air was like champagne and the sky like a sapphire. The faint barking of a dog came from high up the slopes to the great peak, and moving dots of white showed that sheep that had strayed too high during the night were being rounded up and brought down to safer pastures.
The girl paused, leaning on her stick, to watch the working of the Welsh sheepdogs. Two dogs were at work, a biggish grey beast, who at close quarters was wall-eyed, and a little black bitch with a white waistcoat, who was famous all over Wales and had a row of cups engraved with her name on the mantelpiece in the farmhouse. There was no question as to which was the master-mind of the two; the wall-eyed dog did as he was bid.
The sheep, unflurried and obedient to the familiar dogs, were being worked steadily down the slopes towards the path, and Ursula could see Gwennie’s white waistcoat flashing as she galloped in and out among the boulders. So absorbed was she that she did not hear a footstep approaching over the short mountain turf, and it was not until a voice almost in her ear said, ‘Good morning, Ursula,’ that she swung round with a violent start to find Fouldes at her elbow.
‘Are you pleased to see me?’ he inquired.
Ursula took a firm grip on herself. She must not panic, and at all costs she must avoid sliding off into that queer, passive, dream-like state that Fouldes knew so well how to produce in her.
‘I cannot honestly say that I am,’ she said, as steadily as she could, for his presence, as always, shook her self-control.
‘You ought to be. We need to see something of each other, and then the breach that is between us will have a chance to heal.’
‘It cannot heal, now that you have thrown in your lot with Astley.’
‘You shouldn’t believe all you hear, Ursula. I assure you that it gets twisted out of all recognition by the time the Sunday papers have done with it.’
‘Alick confirms most of it.’
‘Two of a trade never agree.’
‘It’s no use arguing, Frank. You know my decision. It would be much better for both of us if you would accept it as final and leave me alone.’
‘Certainly not. You belong to me, and I am going to have you. What is all this tomfoolery about that hulking secretary of Alick’s? Where in the world did he pick the chap up? He looks like an out-of-work bruiser who has been sleeping under hedges.’
‘What he is supposed to be is no business of yours.’
‘Then why get so pink about it?’
Ursula turned on him furiously. ‘I don’t know what you are trying to insinuate, but it is abominably insulting.’
‘I seem to be touching a tender spot, my dear. Are you and Alick trying to replace me with the bruiser?’
‘I refuse to discuss the matter.’
‘My God, Ursula! I can hardly believe it of you. If you won’t have me, at least have something that’s clean and tidy.’
‘I don’t want anything further to do with you!’ Ursula was choking with wrath, for Fouldes had come pretty near to expressing her own opinions where the unfortunate Murchison was concerned.
‘Ursula, you can’t do this thing. It is too revolting. The fellow is only fit to carry a sandwich-board. How can you pair off with a man like that?’
‘I — I won’t discuss the matter with you.’
‘Yes, you will. Come here, Ursula. Look me in the eyes. No, don’t turn away, look at me.’
‘I — I won’t!’ cried Ursula, turning her head aside, but feeling as if her feet were rooted to the ground.
‘Yes, you will. You’ve got to look at me. You can’t help yourself, and you know it. Ursula, look at me. Ursula, look at me. Ursula, look at me—’
‘I won’t! I won’t!’ Ursula’s voice rose to a high scream.
Sounds carry far in the thin mountain air, and canine ears are sharp. She saw the dogs on the high slopes stop and turn their heads. The spell was broken. With a supreme effort Ursula pulled her feet out of the vice that seemed to hold them, and turned and ran for her life down the steep mountain path, Fouldes after her. In a dozen strides he had overtaken her, and throwing his arms round her, held her helpless. She screamed shrilly, struggling desperately against the grey shadows that were closing in upon her. It was this sinking into oblivion she was struggling and screaming against much more than the force the man was using on her, and which she hardly felt. She had no hope that anyone would hear or any help would come. There was no one nearer than the summit of Snowdon. She screamed and screamed, and struggled like a mad thing because it was the best way of defeating the terrible, creeping inertia that was stealing over her, rising from her feet, so that they were rooted to the ground; rising to her waist; rising to her breast. When it reached her eyes she knew she would be unconscious, and would obey Fouldes like an automaton.
Her screams redoubled as she felt the creeping paralysis rising and rising like a tide. She was rigid now to her shoulders, like an Egyptian mummy in its bandages. Only her head and her screaming mouth were free, and the tide was still rising. On the high slopes the dogs too appeared paralysed, not knowing what to make of the scene being enacted below them. Then some waft of the hill-wind blew up the slopes, and Gwenny caught a familiar taint, and like an arrow from the bow she was off at full gallop, ears blown back by the wind of her speed and plumed tail streaming behind like a banner. One of these struggling humans belonged to her! She ran up Fouldes’ back as if it had been a bank, and caught him by the back of his neck in her powerful jaws. It was only the woollen muffler he wore that saved him from having his spine broken, and her long white fangs were unpleasantly near his jugular.
He dropped Ursula perforce, and, reaching over his shoulders, caught the dog by her forepaws and dragged her from her hold, her snapping jaws catching his wrist as she slipped, and inflicting a nasty wound. He kicked her in the belly with his heavy nailed boots, and she rolled over, howling. But in a moment she was up again and flew at him like a hairy fury, her eyes glaring with savagery.
He had dropped his stick to have his hands free to catch hold of Ursula, and he dared not stoop to recover it lest the infuriated dog should get him by the throat, so he confined himself to trying to kick her in the face with his nailed boots as she circled round him, snarling like a fiend. If the other dog had deserted the sheep and joined in the fight Fouldes would have been in a bad way. But Wall-eye was too well trained to do that. It was an understood thing that only one dog left the herd at a time, the other remaining to hold them together and keep them from scattering and wasting all the work that had gone before; so he stuck to his job, only relieving his feelings by strangulated yelps of excitement as he watched the glorious scrap going on below him.
Gwenny was circling round Fouldes, trying to get behind him again, but as he had merely to turn on his heels in order to face her she could not manage it. If he had been content to do this he could have worn her out, but the cruel streak in his nature got the upper hand, and as she ventured in too close he drove at her face with the sole of his nailed boot. Ursula shrieked as she saw the nails go straight at Gwenny’s beautiful brown eyes. But the dog was too quick for him — she ran in under the boot and toppled him over like a nine-pin, and then settled down to worry him. Luckily for him, what she got hold of was a large mouthful of the seat of his trousers. She gnawed it, and worried it, entirely ignoring his vulnerable face and throat, until
it came away in her jaws, and she stood back panting, with half a yard of it hanging from her mouth. She cast one look of utter scorn at the prostrate man, and then, with a jerk of her head at Ursula to indicate that she should follow, trotted quietly down the path towards the farm, looking round every few yards to see that her charge was doing as she was bidden. Ursula, more dead than alive, tottered after her, and fell into the protecting arms of Mrs Davies in the farmyard, while Gwenny stood by, gently waving her plumy tail and bearing her trophy with pride.
The Welsh-woman bustled the girl into the kitchen of the farmhouse, took the great black kettle from its hook over the primitive stove, and poured fresh water and a scatter of tea-leaves into the brown earthenware teapot perpetually stewing on the hob, and drew off the ferocious tea-soup that rejoices the heart of the Welsh. Into this she poured a liberal lacing of Mr Davies’ private supply of whisky, which he, being a deacon, kept for the sick sheep. This potent concoction, which has saved the life of many a shepherd on a wild winter night, she gave to the shuddering girl, and stood back with satisfaction to watch the colour come back to her blanched cheeks and her trembling cease.
Mrs Davies knew that Ursula had been the victim of a disastrous love affair, and had come away to the secluded cottage to avoid the attentions of an undesirable lover, and it did not need any explanation to tell her quick Welsh wits what had happened. She urged upon the girl the desirability of coming down to the farm instead of remaining alone at the cottage, since the cause of all the trouble was evidently in the neighbourhood and bent upon more trouble, and that of a highly unpleasant nature, for Gwenny was not a dog that would have attacked unprovoked. She could see from the girl’s reddened and abraded wrists that considerable violence had been used with her, and that but for Gwenny there might have been more serious damage.
But nothing would persuade Ursula to remain at the farm. She dreaded Mrs Davies’ perpetually clacking tongue, and longed for nothing so much as silence and solitude. The dogs, she knew, would give ample warning and protection in the unlikely event of the approach of Fouldes. So the two women walked up the gully to the cottage, and Mrs Davies, after piling up the fire with logs, wisely left the shaken girl alone to the company and protection of Gwenny, who refused to leave her.