After a moment’s thought, John said, ‘It will be dark before we can get to Nice; so if Copely-Syle has sent a brother wizard down there, he may get Christina out before we arrive on the scene; and Malouet’s chances of finding out at short notice where Upson comes down seems pretty problematical. Of course, that is taking the worst view. All the same, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; so I think our best bet would be to remain here and concentrate on isolating the Canon.’
‘That seems sound to me. We’ll return to Colchester, then collect our bags from the Red Lion and transfer to the Weavers Arms at Little Bentford. By making that our new H.Q. we will be able to maintain a twenty-four-hour turn and turn about watch on The Priory, with only half a mile’s walk to relieve one another, and between watches get food and sleep. Let’s go.’
John drove on till he found a suitable place to reverse the car, then they drove through fourteen miles of twisting lanes back to Colchester. By two o’clock they had packed, paid their bill, and left. Half an hour later they took up their new quarters at Little Bentford and tossed to decide which of them should do the first two-hour spell of duty. John lost, and went out to take up a position in the coppice from which he could keep an eye on The Priory without being seen. As he did so he thanked his stars that throughout the day the weather had taken a turn for the better; so it seemed unlikely that the dreary vigils he and C.B. proposed to keep would be made additionally unpleasant by rain.
He need not have concerned himself about the weather prospects for the night. At a quarter past three he came racing back to the inn and burst into its small parlour. C.B. was just sitting down to an early tea, which he had hoped would make up a little for the lunch he had missed. He looked up to hear John shout: ‘Didn’t you see that car go by? It was he, driven by his black servant. They’ve taken the road the lorry took this morning.’
With a sigh, C.B. abandoned his untasted tea and followed John out to the yard, where they had parked the car under a lean-to. Three minutes later they were on the road to Weeley. The Canon’s car was out of sight; so they had to take a chance at the crossroads and, instead of continuing south, turned off to Thorpe-le-Soken. There they took another chance and turned north towards Great Oakley. They passed the place where they had met Joe Cotton in his lorry two and a half hours earlier, and still they had not picked up the Canon’s car. It was not until they had covered another three miles that C.B. spotted a low moving blob that he thought must be it, far away to their right in the midst of the apparently trackless marshes.
A quarter of a mile farther on they found a narrow track that led seaward, and took it. A few minutes later, after passing a patch of tall reeds, they caught sight of the car again, and some way beyond it the upper structure of the seaplane.
‘Look!’ cried John bitterly. ‘I’ve been expecting this ever since I saw the road the Canon took out of Little Bentford. Upson didn’t leave for France early this afternoon, as we thought. If only we had looked around a bit we might have caught him in his lair, and made a darn good bid to sink his aircraft.’
‘Once the horse was out of the stable, and one saw the direction it was taking, it was easy enough to guess where it would pull up,’ C.B. agreed. ‘But we might have hunted this wilderness for a couple of days without catching sight of Upson’s plane. Given a nice straight piece of Nile it would have been easier to find Moses among the bullrushes.’
Within a few hundred yards of leaving the road, it became clear that they were not on the same track as the Canon’s car had taken; but it also led towards the sheet of open water upon which the seaplane sat motionless.
‘Stop, John!’ C.B. cried. ‘We must go back! This way we’ll be cut off by the water from getting at him.’
At that moment they came out from behind another wide patch of tall reeds and could again see the Canon’s car. It had halted about four hundred yards away. Near it, on the water’s edge, rose the roof of a low boat-house. John had already put on the brake, but as the car continued to run forward at a slower pace they saw that the track curved round in the direction they wanted to go. Assuming that it joined the other further on, John took off the brake. Gathering speed again they covered another hundred yards, once more behind a screen of reeds. When they could next see the water, the Canon was out of his car and down by the boat-house. Beside it lay a broad duck-punt. In the punt stood a countryman holding a tall pole.
The track had now become a narrow causeway and was very bumpy. As they bucketed along they could see the Canon looking in their direction. Only two hundred yards separated them from him. Stooping down, he made the gesture of picking up something from the ground. Raising his arm he appeared to throw it at them.
John jerked his head aside. The car swerved violently.
‘Look where you’re going—not at him!’ yelled C.B. But his shout of warning came too late. The near front wheel had gone over the edge of the low bank. The stiff reeds made a sharp rustling sound as they scraped along the coachwork of the car. Heaving on the steering-wheel, John strove to right it; but the bank was too steep. The car heeled over sideways, ran on for a dozen yards, then lurched to a stop, both its near wheels axle-deep in mud and water.
‘You idiot!’ snapped C.B. ‘Why the hell didn’t you keep your eyes on the track?’
‘I couldn’t help ducking when he threw that stone,’ John protested angrily. ‘It was instinct.’
‘He made the motion of throwing, but he didn’t throw anything.’
‘Yes he did; a damn great stone. It came hurtling straight at the windscreen.’
‘He didn’t, I tell you. He couldn’t have thrown anything that distance.’
‘I saw it.’
‘No you didn’t,’ C.B. said bitterly. ‘But I don’t doubt you thought you did. It just shows what a powerful Black Magician he is to have been able to cast the thought into your mind so successfully.’
While they were speaking they had scrambled out of the car and started to run down the track. It curved again round another island of reeds, then came to an abrupt ending at a rough wooden landing-stage.
With a curse John made to plunge into the water. Grabbing his coat collar, C.B. pulled him back, and cried, ‘Don’t be a fool! The mud in these marshes is yards deep in places, and there are underwater reeds as well. You would drown for a certainty.’
To have run all the way back to the road, then down the other track which followed the far side of the creek on which they were standing, would have taken at least twenty minutes. Impotent and furious, they could only remain where they were, watching the final scene of their enemy’s triumph.
The servant had already turned the Canon’s car and was driving it back towards the road. The Canon was now in the punt and being poled out to the seaplane. They could see now that, although small and tubby, it was a powerful twin-engined affair. Upson came to its door and helped his passenger aboard.
As the labourer in the punt pushed off C.B. cupped his hands and yelled to him to come and pick them up, offering him treble the money he had received for ferrying out his last passenger if he would do so. He made the bid only as a forlorn hope and, as he expected, it proved futile. Either from fear of the Canon, or because he knew that he had been assisting an illegal emigration, the fellow ignored C.B.’s shouts, poled the punt back into the boat-house, then disappeared among the reeds. By that time Upson had the seaplane’s engines running. Two minutes later it turned into the wind and ran forward. A double sheet of spray hissed up from beneath its stern and a quarter of a mile down the creek it sailed gracefully into the air.
Returning to the car, they spent twenty minutes trying to get it unditched; but there was no brushwood, or anything else of that kind in the vicinity that they could stuff under the wheels to give them a grip; so they were forced to abandon their efforts.
C.B. glanced at his watch and said, ‘This is not so good, John. It is a quarter-past four and we are miles from anywhere. If we had the use of the car we could have reache
d London before dark and, perhaps, managed to hire a plane to fly us out to Nice; but that is ruled out now. It must be a good hour’s tramp to the nearest village and in these little places they don’t run to hire cars. By the time we’ve telephoned to Colchester and got a car to pick us up, then done the seventy miles to Northolt, it will be getting on for eight o’clock; and the aircraft of the private companies are not equipped for night flying.’
John looked a little puzzled as he replied, ‘But we decided to stay here.’
‘That was when we thought the Canon meant to stay here too, and we could keep a watch on him.’
‘I know; and the fact that he will now be down on the Riviera by about nine o’clock naturally adds to the chances of his being able to get Christina out of prison. After your visit last night he is certain to have telephoned de Grasse to make all the preliminary arrangements for his attempt; and now he’ll have the whole of the night to work in. But all the same, it seems to me that we still have a good hope of spiking his guns at the last moment.’
‘You mean if the prison authorities do their stuff? I agree about that. From the moment the idea of putting her inside was mooted I felt that we were on a winner. And in spite of what the old so-and-so said to me last night I’d still lay three to one against his or any other Black Magician succeeding in getting her out at such short notice.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that, C.B. I meant in the worst event—saying that he does succeed. He has still got to bring her and the homunculus back here tomorrow. Seaplanes can’t just land anywhere. At least, this one can’t if it is to fulfil its purpose of putting the Canon, Christina—either unwilling or unconscious—and that heavy crate safely ashore. And I should think the odds are very much against his having another prepared base in this neighbourhood, because he could hardly have foreseen that we should discover this one. Now that we have, you can go to the police, report his unauthorised departure from the country, and have it watched for their return. We’ll relieve him of Christina as he lands, and have him and Upson arrested.’
C.B. looked at John and his face was troubled. ‘It’s a good idea, laddie; but I’m afraid it won’t work out. Now he knows we know his base he is much too crafty to return to it. And there is more to it than that. You remember what we were saying a while ago; about our being certain of winning out on the big issue only if we could prevent one of the three factors—Canon, homunculus and Christina—from joining up with the other two? Well, that is now beyond our power. In a few hours’ time all three of them will be in Nice. You know the story of Mahomet when he couldn’t get the mountain to come to him? In this case Christina is the mountain; and so far the Canon has failed to budge her. Since we have made things so hot for him here, and the time in which to get her back is now so short, it is my bet that he decided this morning to do the job out there. That is why he had the homunculus put on the seaplane instead of hiding it in the house of a pal. And now Mahomet has gone to the mountain.’
Chapter 21
The Pact with Satan
‘Oh God!’ muttered John. ‘So far that fiend has won every trick, and soon there will be only a few locked doors between him and Christina. Is there nothing we can do to help in preventing him from getting at her?’
‘We can send a telegram warning Malouet that the Canon is on his way,’ C.B. suggested. ‘There is just a chance that the French police might pick him up on landing. If so, he could be arrested for Illegal Entry. But you can be sure that he has been in communication with de Grasse about flying out; so the seaplane will not come down at the Ile de Port Cros. De Grasse would not risk that. He will appreciate that since our visit to it yesterday morning Malouet may have got the police to keep it under observation; so he will have instructed Upson to land at one of his other haunts, where there is little chance of his being spotted. I’m afraid, John, that for tonight you’ll have to pin your faith on the French prison system; and believe me, it’s a pretty good one.’
‘I only hope you’re right. Anyhow, the sooner we send that telegram, the better.’ Leaning through the window of the car, John pulled a map from the pocket next to the driver’s seat. A glance at it showed that the nearest village was probably Great Oakley. They could not be certain of their exact position among the tangled creeks of Hansford Water, but judged the village to be between three and five miles distant. Having locked the car they set off there.
The sky was a uniform grey, but somewhere in the west the sun was now getting down towards the horizon, and as they began to trudge in that direction John wondered miserably how fate would deal with Christina during this last critical night before her birthday. He would have given a great deal to be with her or, that being out of the question, at least able to keep watch outside her prison; and his impotence riled him all the more from the fact that it was he who had taken the decision to remain in England to watch the Canon. C.B. had given him the choice early that afternoon, and had he chosen the alternative they could have been well on their way to Nice by now. Yet he knew that it was silly to blame himself for his blunder, as it had seemed the best course to take at the time.
It was half-past five when they reached Great Oakley and the light was fading. From the village pub they telephoned their telegram to Malouet, then put through a call to a garage in Colchester for a breakdown van with a searchlight. It picked them up at a quarter-past six and they returned to the marshes. They lost twenty minutes searching along several tracks for the point at which C.B.’s car had become ditched, but once they found it there was little difficulty in hauling the car out. Both of them now thought it unlikely that the seaplane would bring the Canon back and land again on the same stretch of water next day, but that possibility could not be ignored; so they intended asking the police to keep a watch on it. To do so meant going in to Colchester and, with the Canon gone, there no longer seemed any point in their sleeping at Little Bentford. In consequence, in the car with John at the wheel once more, they collected their bags from the Weavers Arms and drove to the market town. There John dropped C.B. off at the police station and went on to book rooms and order dinner at the Red Lion.
By then it was getting on for eight o’clock. Soon afterwards C.B. came in and they sat down to dine. While they ate, in low voices they reviewed the situation, and could not escape the fact that they had far graver grounds for depression than they had had when dining there the night before. Then, their only cause for gloom had been that their journey appeared to have been rendered futile by their failure to locate Beddows through his office. Now they had found him, but he had refused them his help. They had also found out a great deal about the Canon; above all, that he was not merely seeking to corrupt Christina but, if he could get hold of her, meant to kill her.
The thought of the night to come, and his utter helplessness during it, to which he must attempt to reconcile himself, had now been preying on John’s mind for four hours. He seemed obsessed with the idea that if only they could think of it, there must be some way in which they could either foil the Canon in his bid to get at Christina, or strengthen her mind to resist his influence.
C.B. could only suggest that they should rout out a parson, beg the keys of his church and pray for her in it. John said he would willingly spend the night on his knees, but had always believed that God helped those who helped themselves; and felt sure that there must be some active measure which might bring about more definite results. Yet it was the suggestion of prayer that gave him an idea, and after a moment he said: ‘I am still convinced that something could be done through Beddows. After all, he is much more than Christina’s physical father. As it was he who sold her to the Devil, he is her godfather as well—and not just in the modern sense of buying her a christening-mug and trying to remember to give her a quid on her birthdays. By inducting him as a Satanist the Canon took spiritual responsibility for him, and he in turn took spiritual responsibility for Christina. If we could only persuade him to pray to Jesus Christ for her tonight I believe we would achieve something
really worth while.’
‘I get the idea,’ murmured C.B. dubiously. ‘As he admitted to us that it was having her baptised into the Satanic faith which makes her subject to evil influences during the hours of darkness, your theory is that if we could get him to recant she would no longer be subject to those influences.’
‘Exactly! Then, whatever success the Canon may have in casting spells on her jailers tonight, when it comes to willing her to leave her cell she would reject the thought and sit tight there.’
C.B. rubbed his big nose. ‘Your reasoning seems sound enough; but I’d as soon hope to jump Becher’s Brook on a donkey as get Beddows to do as you suggest. Do you realise that after all these years of battening on the fruits of evil he would have to abjure his Master? It isn’t even as if he really cares very deeply what happens to Christina. And the risk! If he forswears Satan now, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him struck dead by some form of seizure.’
‘Well, he has had his fling; and if he lives on he will be lucky if he escapes being hounded into a madhouse by the Canon. Providing he abjures, even if he does die, we shall have achieved our object, and I wouldn’t allow his life to weigh with me for one moment against Christina’s. I agree that it is a thousand to one against our being able to persuade him to rely on God’s mercy, but there is that one chance; and to make the attempt is a thousand times better than spending the night doing nothing.’
To the Devil, a Daughter Page 33