‘And he graciously accepted the bequest?’
‘He was very detached about it. Said it would be many long years before I passed over, that he could tell I was cut out for a long life of joy and spiritual fulfilment. He really speaks most movingly.’
‘So it would seem.’
Poirot’s tone was dry. He went on:
‘You mentioned your health?’
‘Yes, M. Poirot. I told him that I had had lung trouble, and that it had recurred more than once, but that a final treatment in a Sanatorium some years ago had, I hoped, quite cured me.’
‘Excellent!’
‘Though why it is necessary for me to say that I am consumptive when my lungs are as sound as a bell I really cannot see.’
‘Be assured it is necessary. You mentioned your friend?’
‘Yes. I told him (strictly in confidence) that dear Emmeline, besides the fortune she had inherited from her husband, would inherit an even larger sum shortly from an aunt who was deeply attached to her.’
‘Eh bien, that ought to keep Mrs Clegg safe for the time being!’
‘Oh, M. Poirot, do you really think there is anything wrong?’
‘That is what I am going to endeavour to find out. Have you met a Mr Cole down at the Sanctuary?’
‘There was a Mr Cole there last time I went down. A most peculiar man. He wears grass-green shorts and eats nothing but cabbage. He is a very ardent believer.’
‘Eh bien, all progresses well—I make you my compliments on the work you have done—all is now set for the Autumn Festival.’
‘Miss Carnaby—just a moment.’
Mr Cole clutched at Miss Carnaby, his eyes bright and feverish.
‘I have had a Vision—a most remarkable Vision. I really must tell you about it.’
Miss Carnaby sighed. She was rather afraid of Mr Cole and his Visions. There were moments when she was decidedly of the opinion that Mr Cole was mad.
And she found these Visions of his sometimes very embarrassing. They recalled to her certain outspoken passages in that very modern German book on the Subconscious Mind which she had read before coming down to Devon.
Mr Cole, his eyes glistening, his lips twitching, began to talk excitedly.
‘I had been meditating—reflecting on the Fullness of Life, on the Supreme Joy of Oneness—and then, you know, my eyes were opened and I saw—’
Miss Carnaby braced herself and hoped that what Mr Cole had seen would not be what he had seen the last time—which had been, apparently, a Ritual Marriage in ancient Sumeria between a god and goddess.
‘I saw’—Mr Cole leant towards her, breathing hard, his eyes looking (yes, really they did) quite mad—‘the Prophet Elijah descending from Heaven in his fiery chariot.’
Miss Carnaby breathed a sigh of relief. Elijah was much better, she didn’t mind Elijah.
‘Below,’ went on Mr Cole, ‘were the altars of Baal—hundreds and hundreds of them. A Voice cried to me: “Look, write and testify that which you shall see—”’
He stopped and Miss Carnaby murmured politely: ‘Yes?’
‘On the altars were the sacrifices, bound there, helpless, waiting for the knife. Virgins—hundreds of virgins—young beautiful, naked virgins—’
Mr Cole smacked his lips, Miss Carnaby blushed.
‘Then came the ravens, the ravens of Odin, flying from the North. They met the ravens of Elijah—together they circled in the sky—they swooped, they plucked out the eyes of the victims—there was wailing and gnashing of teeth—and the Voice cried: “Behold a Sacrifice—for on this day shall Jehovah and Odin sign blood brotherhood!” Then the Priests fell upon their victims, they raised their knives—they mutilated their victims—’
Desperately Miss Carnaby broke away from her tormentor who was now slavering at the mouth in a kind of sadistic fervour:
‘Excuse me one moment.’
She hastily accosted Lipscomb, the man who occupied the Lodge which gave admission to Green Hills and who providentially happened to be passing.
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if you have found a brooch of mine. I must have dropped it somewhere about the grounds.’
Lipscomb, who was a man immune from the general sweetness and light of Green Hills, merely growled that he hadn’t seen any brooch. It wasn’t his work to go about looking for things. He tried to shake off Miss Carnaby but she accompanied him, babbling about her brooch, till she had put a safe distance between herself and the fervour of Mr Cole.
At that moment, the Master himself came out of the Great Fold and, emboldened by his benignant smile, Miss Carnaby ventured to speak her mind to him.
Did he think that Mr Cole was quite—was quite—
The Master laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘You must cast out Fear,’ he said. ‘Perfect Love casteth out Fear . . .’
‘But I think Mr Cole is mad. Those Visions he has—’
‘As yet,’ said the Master, ‘he sees Imperfectly . . . through the Glass of his own Carnal Nature. But the day will come when he shall see Spiritually—Face to Face.’
Miss Carnaby was abashed. Of course, put like that—She rallied to make a smaller protest.
‘And really,’ she said, ‘need Lipscomb be so abominably rude?’
Again the Master gave his Heavenly Smile.
‘Lipscomb,’ he said, ‘is a faithful watch-dog. He is a crude—a primitive soul—but faithful—utterly faithful.’
He strode on. Miss Carnaby saw him meet Mr Cole, pause, put a hand on Mr Cole’s shoulder. She hoped that the Master’s influence might alter the scope of future visions.
In any case, it was only a week now to the Autumn Festival.
On the afternoon preceding the Festival, Miss Carnaby met Hercule Poirot in a small teashop in the sleepy little town of Newton Woodbury. Miss Carnaby was flushed and even more breathless than usual. She sat sipping tea and crumbling a rock bun between her fingers.
Poirot asked several questions to which she replied monosyllabically.
Then he said:
‘How many will there be at the Festival?’
‘I think a hundred and twenty. Emmeline is there, of course, and Mr Cole—really he has been very odd lately. He has visions. He described some of them to me—really most peculiar—I hope, I do hope, he is not insane. Then there will be quite a lot of new members—nearly twenty.’
‘Good. You know what you have to do?’
There was a moment’s pause before Miss Carnaby said in a rather odd voice:
‘I know what you told me, M. Poirot . . .’
‘Très bien!’
Then Amy Carnaby said clearly and distinctly:
‘But I am not going to do it.’
Hercule Poirot stared at her. Miss Carnaby rose to her feet. Her voice came fast and hysterical.
‘You sent me here to spy on Dr Andersen. You suspected him of all sorts of things. But he is a wonderful man—a great Teacher. I believe in him heart and soul! And I am not going to do your spying work any more, M. Poirot! I am one of the Sheep of the Shepherd. The Master has a new message for the World and from now on, I belong to him body and soul. And I’ll pay for my own tea, please.’
With which slight anticlimax Miss Carnaby plonked down one and threepence and rushed out of the tea-shop.
‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom,’ said Hercule Poirot.
The waitress had to ask him twice before he realized that she was presenting the bill. He met the interested stare of a surly looking man at the next table, flushed, paid the check and got up and went out.
He was thinking furiously.
Once again the Sheep were assembled in the Great Fold. The Ritual Questions and Answers had been chanted.
‘Are you prepared for the Sacrament?’
‘We are.’
‘Bind your eyes and hold out your right arm.’
The Great Shepherd, magnificent in his green robe, moved along the waiting lines. The cabbage-eating, vision-seeing Mr Cole, next to Miss Carn
aby, gave a gulp of painful ecstasy as the needle pierced his flesh.
The Great Shepherd stood by Miss Carnaby. His hands touched her arm . . .
‘No, you don’t. None of that . . .’
Words incredible—unprecedented. A scuffle, a roar of anger. Green veils were torn from eyes—to see an unbelievable sight—the Great Shepherd struggling in the grasp of the sheep-skinned Mr Cole aided by another devotee.
In rapid professional tones, the erstwhile Mr Cole was saying:
‘—and I have here a warrant for your arrest. I must warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence at your trial.’
There were other figures now at the door of the Sheep Fold—blue uniformed figures.
Someone cried: ‘It’s the police. They’re taking the Master away. They’re taking the Master . . .’
Everyone was shocked—horrified . . . to them the Great Shepherd was a martyr; suffering, as all great teachers suffer, from the ignorance and persecution of the outside world . . .
Meanwhile Detective Inspector Cole was carefully packing up the hypodermic syringe that had fallen from the Great Shepherd’s hand.
‘My brave colleague!’
Poirot shook Miss Carnaby warmly by the hand and introduced her to Chief Inspector Japp.
‘First class work, Miss Carnaby,’ said Chief Inspector Japp. ‘We couldn’t have done it without you and that’s a fact.’
‘Oh dear!’ Miss Carnaby was flattered. ‘It’s so kind of you to say so. And I’m afraid, you know, that I’ve really enjoyed it all. The excitement, you know, and playing my part. I got quite carried away sometimes. I really felt I was one of those foolish women.’
‘That’s where your success lay,’ said Japp. ‘You were the genuine article. Nothing less would have taken that gentleman in! He’s a pretty astute scoundrel.’
Miss Carnaby turned to Poirot.
‘That was a terrible moment in the teashop. I didn’t know what to do. I just had to act on the spur of the moment.’
‘You were magnificent,’ said Poirot warmly. ‘For a moment I thought that either you or I had taken leave of our senses. I thought for one little minute that you meant it.’
‘It was such a shock,’ said Miss Carnaby. ‘Just when we had been talking confidentially. I saw in the glass that Lipscomb, who keeps the Lodge of the Sanctuary, was sitting at the table behind me. I don’t know now if it was an accident or if he had actually followed me. As I say, I had to do the best I could on the spur of the minute and trust that you would understand.’
Poirot smiled.
‘I did understand. There was only one person sitting near enough to overhear anything we said and as soon as I left the teashop I arranged to have him followed when he came out. When he went straight back to the Sanctuary I understood that I could rely on you and that you would not let me down—but I was afraid because it increased the danger for you.’
‘Was—was there really danger? What was there in the syringe?’
Japp said:
‘Will you explain, or shall I?’
Poirot said gravely:
‘Mademoiselle, this Dr Andersen had perfected a scheme of exploitation and murder—scientific murder. Most of his life has been spent in bacteriological research. Under a different name he has a chemical laboratory in Sheffield. There he makes cultures of various bacilli. It was his practice, at the Festivals, to inject into his followers a small but sufficient dose of Cannabis Indica—which is also known by the names of Hashish or Bhang. This gives delusions of grandeur and pleasurable enjoyment. It bound his devotees to him. These were the Spiritual Joys that he promised them.’
‘Most remarkable,’ said Miss Carnaby. ‘Really a most remarkable sensation.’
Hercule Poirot nodded.
‘That was his general stock in trade—a dominating personality, the power of creating mass hysteria and the reactions produced by this drug. But he had a second aim in view.
‘Lonely women, in their gratitude and fervour, made wills leaving their money to the Cult. One by one, these women died. They died in their own homes and apparently of natural causes. Without being too technical I will try to explain. It is possible to make intensified cultures of certain bacteria. The bacillus Coli Communis, for instance, the cause of ulcerative colitis. Typhoid bacilli can be introduced into the system. So can the Pneumococcus. There is also what is termed Old Tuberculin which is harmless to a healthy person but which stimulates any old tubercular lesion into activity. You perceive the cleverness of the man? These deaths would occur in different parts of the country, with different doctors attending them and without any risk of arousing suspicion. He had also, I gather, cultivated a substance which had the power of delaying but intensifying the action of the chosen bacillus.’
‘He’s a devil, if there ever was one!’ said Chief Inspector Japp.
Poirot went on:
‘By my orders, you told him that you were a tuberculous subject. There was Old Tuberculin in the syringe when Cole arrested him. Since you were a healthy person it would not have harmed you, which is why I made you lay stress on your tubercular trouble. I was terrified that even now he might choose some other germ, but I respected your courage and I had to let you take the risk.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Miss Carnaby brightly. ‘I don’t mind taking risks. I’m only frightened of bulls in fields and things like that. But have you enough evidence to convict this dreadful person?’
Japp grinned.
‘Plenty of evidence,’ he said. ‘We’ve got his laboratory and his cultures and the whole layout!’
Poirot said:
‘It is possible, I think, that he has committed a long line of murders. I may say that it was not because his mother was a Jewess that he was dismissed from that German University. That merely made a convenient tale to account for his arrival here and to gain sympathy for him. Actually, I fancy, he is of pure Aryan blood.’
Miss Carnaby sighed.
‘Qu’est ce qu’il y a?’ asked Poirot.
‘I was thinking,’ said Miss Carnaby, ‘of a marvellous dream I had at the First Festival—hashish, I suppose. I arranged the whole world so beautifully! No wars, no poverty, no ill health, no ugliness . . .’
‘It must have been a fine dream,’ said Japp enviously.
Miss Carnaby jumped up. She said:
‘I must get home. Emily has been so anxious. And dear Augustus has been missing me terribly, I hear.’
Hercule Poirot said with a smile:
‘He was afraid, perhaps, that like him, you were going “to die for Hercule Poirot”!’
The Red Signal
‘No, but how too thrilling,’ said pretty Mrs Eversleigh, opening her lovely, but slightly vacant eyes very wide. ‘They always say women have a sixth sense; do you think it’s true, Sir Alington?’
The famous alienist smiled sardonically. He had an unbounded contempt for the foolish pretty type, such as his fellow guest. Alington West was the supreme authority on mental disease, and he was fully alive to his own position and importance. A slightly pompous man of full figure.
‘A great deal of nonsense is talked, I know that, Mrs Eversleigh. What does the term mean—a sixth sense?’
‘You scientific men are always so severe. And it really is extraordinary the way one seems to positively know things sometimes—just know them, feel them, I mean—quite uncanny—it really is. Claire knows what I mean, don’t you, Claire?’
She appealed to her hostess with a slight pout, and a tilted shoulder.
Claire Trent did not reply at once. It was a small dinner party, she and her husband, Violet Eversleigh, Sir Alington West, and his nephew, Dermot West, who was an old friend of Jack Trent’s. Jack Trent himself, a somewhat heavy florid man, with a good-humoured smile, and a pleasant lazy laugh, took up the thread.
‘Bunkum, Violet! Your best friend is killed in a railway accident. Straight away you remember that you dreamt of a black cat last Tuesday—marvellous, you fe
lt all along that something was going to happen!’
‘Oh, no, Jack, you’re mixing up premonitions with intuition now. Come, now, Sir Alington, you must admit that premonitions are real?’
‘To a certain extent, perhaps,’ admitted the physician cautiously. ‘But coincidence accounts for a good deal, and then there is the invariable tendency to make the most of a story afterwards—you’ve always got to take that into account.’
‘I don’t think there is any such thing as premonition,’ said Claire Trent, rather abruptly. ‘Or intuition, or a sixth sense, or any of the things we talk about so glibly. We go through life like a train rushing through the darkness to an unknown destination.’
‘That’s hardly a good simile, Mrs Trent,’ said Dermot West, lifting his head for the first time and taking part in the discussion. There was a curious glitter in the clear grey eyes that shone out rather oddly from the deeply tanned face. ‘You’ve forgotten the signals, you see.’
‘The signals?’
‘Yes, green if it’s all right, and red—for danger!’
‘Red—for danger—how thrilling!’ breathed Violet Eversleigh.
Dermot turned from her rather impatiently.
‘That’s just a way of describing it, of course. Danger ahead! The red signal! Look out!’
Trent stared at him curiously.
‘You speak as though it were an actual experience, Dermot, old boy.’
‘So it is—has been, I mean.’
‘Give us the yarn.’
‘I can give you one instance. Out in Mesopotamia—just after the Armistice, I came into my tent one evening with the feeling strong upon me. Danger! Look out! Hadn’t the ghost of a notion what it was all about. I made a round of the camp, fussed unnecessarily, took all precautions against an attack by hostile Arabs. Then I went back to my tent. As soon as I got inside, the feeling popped up again stronger than ever. Danger! In the end, I took a blanket outside, rolled myself up in it and slept there.’
‘Well?’
‘The next morning, when I went inside the tent, first thing I saw was a great knife arrangement—about half a yard long—struck down through my bunk, just where I would have lain. I soon found out about it—one of the Arab servants. His son had been shot as a spy. What have you got to say to that, Uncle Alington, as an example of what I call the red signal?’
The Last Seance Page 28