In less than a minute the acolyte returned, this time without her censer but bearing upon a black and silver cushion a short, broad-bladed, sacrificial knife. The knife she placed on the recumbent figure of the girl upon the table, and then retired again. The white cock fluttered and squawked, as though some instinct warned it of its approaching demise. Some of the spectators shivered, but with a kind of unhealthy, erotic excitement, it seemed to Mrs. Bradley; certainly not from fear.
As though the noise made by the bird had been a signal, in from the bookcase corner stepped a dignified man. He was dressed in a black robe, one shoulder of which was silver in the design of a crowing cock. Round his neck was a heavy silver chain with a great squat toad in silver on the end of it. He was preceded by the acolyte, holding a candle. She advanced the candle towards his breast as though to demonstrate the symbols on gown and silver chain.
The congregation stood up. The woman who had giggled before now gave a low moan of excitement, and it seemed to Mrs. Bradley that the priest of the mysteries scowled at her as though he had been put out by her behaviour.
Then the service began: but it was not the service of the Black Mass, with which, by reading, by observation, and through the confessions of overwrought patients, Mrs. Bradley was almost drearily familiar. This service, while combining some of the elements of Voodoo ritual with some of the trappings of the Black Mass and a good many of its childish perversions, was something new. No one thing in it was original, but the component parts of the service had been put together in such a way that the mystery under celebration was, in its complete form, a new ritual.
There was nothing obscene about it, and nothing unpleasant, except for the death of the cock, and even this was, at any rate, instantaneous. The body of the girl upon the table, far from being repulsive in any way, was beautiful. Her nakedness was the sculptured coldness of a sixth-century stêle. Her enforced stillness was that of a statue.
The ritual began with the recitation of what appeared to be a prayer. This was intoned by the priest only, the part supplied by the congregation consisting only of the word Phanes, murmured politely by the worshippers at intervals.
The prayer seemed to be an invocation, so far as Mrs. Bradley could make out, of the long-superseded goddess Ishtar. The priest pleaded for Ishtar to manifest herself to the people. When it was concluded, the congregation remained standing and the priest stepped over the rims of the two circles and into the pentagram and continued, this time passionately, to invoke the goddess. She, needless to say, made no more response than Baal to the priests of Jezebel, and, working himself into a frenzy, the priest turned his back on the congregation, leapt out of the pentagram and across the circles to the table, and was handed the sacrificial knife by the acolyte.
The monkey-man who had drawn out the magic formulae on the floor had not returned. Mrs. Bradley supposed from some sharp sentences, which were hissed from priest to acolyte at the table, that he ought to have returned and had not. Between his hissed instructions, the priest moaned and slavered, working himself up, it appeared, to the first peak of the ritual. Just as he picked up the silver cage containing the cock, the acolyte disappeared through the bookcase corner, and the hysterical worshipper who had twice given way already, now appeared to be completely overcome, and, giving a slight scream, made for the door, closely pursued by her male escort of the diamond studs, and, to Jonathan’s surprise and great dismay, by his aunt, who hurried out with her as though to render some assistance.
Once in the passage, however, Mrs. Bradley did not hesitate. She pushed past the two in the darkness, made for the adjoining room, and twisted the handle. She had expected that the room would be locked, but it was not. Inside it was brightly lighted by large electric bulbs connected with batteries, and there in the middle of it was Pirberry with a grin on his face, a gun in his hand, and the monkey-man in handcuffs. The acolyte, with an almost ludicrous expression of surprise and fright on her painted countenance, was standing stiffly in front of him with her hands up.
“I want those robes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Off with them. Go on. He won’t shoot if you’re quick.”
The woman took off her bright red robes, and Mrs. Bradley put them on. She changed shoes with the woman, too, and humanely gave her her coat, since she was now clad only in a vest.
“What were you going to take in with you?” she asked. The woman pointed to a glass vessel shaped like a fan. It was flat and shallow, and the handle of the fan formed a straight bar of glass with which to hold it.
“What is it for?” she asked quickly. The woman pointed to her mouth and opened it. To the horror of the Detective Inspector, who let out a startled, although muttered oath, she had no tongue.
“All to the good,” said Mrs. Bradley. She pulled the hood well over her face, drew on the acolyte’s silver gloves, picked up the glass fan-shaped vessel and found that the bookcase angle was screened by double, baize-covered doors which screened all light from the room in which the ritual was being performed. She slipped through and handed the glass vessel to the priest. He scowled at her and made an impatient signal to her to hold it. He had the cock by the feet in one hand, the sacrificial knife in the other. Actually he made a spectacle ludicrous rather than terrifying, she thought; an opinion which appeared to be shared by at least two other persons present, for she distinctly heard a young man’s voice observe, “Two to one in ponies on the cock,” and another’s reply, “Done.”
The priest knew his job, however, and with a high cry of triumph he sliced off the cock’s head with such dexterity that it fell in the very middle of the pentagram. His success appeared to cause him some elation, for he muttered “Golly! What a shot!” as he held the cock so that some of the blood might spurt into the fan-shaped dish. Then, whilst the worshippers called upon Phanes—except those who called upon Ishtar—he took the fan-shaped vessel and, turning his back on the congregation, went to the bound and gagged girl upon the table and began to pour the cock’s blood, drop by drop, on to the table but not actually on to her body. Mrs. Bradley followed closely and found herself looking into the agonised, horrified eyes of Kitty Trevelyan, whom she had supposed safe in the south of the county, far enough from horrors and enjoying the last remaining days of her holiday.
The blood dripped from the table, and the priest, retrieving what he could of it in the fan-shaped vessel, muttered to Mrs. Bradley without turning his head:
“What’s happened to Picket? Why doesn’t he come in?”
Mrs. Bradley grunted.
“Oh, no good asking you to tell me,” he continued, as though recollecting that the acolyte was dumb. Something in the tone warned Mrs. Bradley, however. Still upon the table was the knife, stained now by the cock’s bright blood, but razor-keen and very handy. The priest turned round with the fan-shaped vessel in his hands, and Mrs. Bradley was aware that the worshippers had left their stools, were crowded at the black and silver cord, and were kneeling with closed eyes and faces lifted towards the ceiling.
She had, with a sudden shock, a vision of the woman who had been found dead on board Calpurnia, her throat slit right across and so deeply that her head was almost hanging off. She had recognised the priest as Amos Bleriot. It looked as though, unless something were done, there would be yet another victim.
She had a little bottle, very firmly stoppered, in her pocket, under the heavy red robes. With it—wrapped round it, in fact—was a small, thin cotton handkerchief.
Amos Bleriot, advancing with mincing, almost dancing steps towards his congregation, began to chant, in Greek, the hymn to the sun. The people’s heads began to move in unison very slowly from side to side. One man, whose face Mrs. Bradley could just see, had flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. She could hear those out of her orbit of vision drawing sharp breaths as though they were excited and afraid. She stood aside, muffling her face, and as Bleriot began to touch the throats of the worshippers with the tip of his index-finger which he dipped in the blood of the cock, sh
e, too, knelt down, and being by this time behind him as well as to the side, and being also outside the light thrown from the candles on the table, she fumbled under the robes for the bottle and the handkerchief.
It was as he returned to the table that she got him. He went down like a log under her skilfully timed hook round his ankle, and as he fell she fell on him and smothered his mouth and nostrils in the saturated handkerchief. He snorted and struggled for a moment, but the powerful anaesthetic finished him. She advanced towards the congregation, the heavy knife in her hand, and picked up the chant with another, supplying her own ritual words—scraps from Orphic worship, sentences from the ancient ritual of the Phrygian mysteries, recollections of the religion (what is known or can be deduced of it) of the Minoan mysteries of Crete. Even Aristophanes and Hesiod, even the aphorisms of Herakleites and the teachings of Pythagoras, found a place in the jumbled, extraordinary, poetic nonsense, which she intoned in her glorious voice, standing there like a sibyl beside the prostrate body of the priest.
The people, some of whom had stood up, did not at first know what to make of the course events had taken, but the continuation of what appeared to be the ritual, combined with the magic charm of a voice engaged in the sonorous sentences of the Neo-Satanist Creed (as it was afterwards referred to in print by one of the congregation who happened to be a journalist, had come out of curiosity, and was accustomed to writing shorthand in an insufficient light and amid romantic and improbable surroundings) kept them silent and held them in thrall.
“The Bull is the father of the Serpent,” pronounced Mrs. Bradley, with the solemn declamation of prophecy, “and the Serpent is the father of the Bull.
“Chaos is the Beginning; thence arise Gaia, Tartaros, and Eros.
“Time is a silver egg in the Divine Ether, and from this Egg is borne Phanes, the creator of the world.”
“Phanes! Phanes!” moaned the congregation, picking up the keynote of their own Mysteries.
“The Lycian wild gods are twelve,” intoned Mrs. Bradley. “The Thirteenth is their leader.
“Power is Life, although it has no name. Who governs, binds: and there is a Yoke upon us.”
She stepped forward and laid her free hand on the black and silver cord which separated the sanctuary from the public part of the room. The other now held the knife. Then she turned back upon her audience, and advanced to the table upon which the girl still lay bound. She cut her bonds swiftly and cleanly with the knife, bundled her up in the cloth that was on the table, and blew out both the candles. She pushed the frightened girl through the little doorway. Then she advanced again, and continued her chant.
“The Courtiers gain possession of the Body.” She indicated the helpless priest of the mysteries. “But the Hero displays the Monster’s Tongue.
“The Rivers are to be worshipped, and the Place of the Darker Waters is to the Son of Semele.
“Time is a child who plays and moves the pieces; the leadership is to the Child. Even so it is with Heracles, Strangler of Serpents.
“As it is for Minos and Orion, so it is for the worshippers.
“Think upon him who weaves his rope in vain.” Her voice began to rise. She had seen Jonathan make his stealthy way to the door.
“Think upon him who is seated on the skin of the Vulture.
“Think upon the Ferryman, and read well the Gold Leaves which are laid in the Place of the Dead.”
Her voice rose to the wildest heights of frenzy, and she pointed a yellow claw (from which the red sleeve fell away, revealing upon the index finger an enormous ruby set in a platinum ring) at the two small candles still burning upon the bookcase.
“Who is it walking with Cock’s Feet among the souls of the living?
“Who is it trampling with taurine hoof in the sacred Hall of the Axes?
“Whose altar is it, like a tree?
“Where the lions and the leopards are reared, and where they climb, where the Pillar is standing above the gates of blood, where the mountains roll together, there he is.”
So he was, if she meant Detective Inspector Pirberry. Followed quietly by Jonathan and the constables whom he had rounded up for the purpose, he made an effective entrance.
“Sit down, all of you!” he said calmly. “Everyone is under arrest.”
• CHAPTER 24 •
“Alice did not much like her keeping so close to her; first, because the Duchess was very ugly; and secondly because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin on Alice’s shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin.”
—From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
“But, of course, it doesn’t get us all the way, does it?” said Jonathan, sprawled on O’Reilly’s deck and eating cokernut chips out of a large paper bag.
“Well, I don’t know,” replied his aunt, who was seated sedately near him and was engaged with her knitting, a shapeless piece of work in a particularly oppressive shade of gamboges. “It has given Mr. Pirberry what he calls ‘an even break.’ The inspector, who feels much better, I am glad to say, states that he is pleased at getting Amos Bleriot into his clutches, and I have had the opportunity of speaking my mind to the students, whom I have sent to their homes.”
“Yes; how came the fair Kitty to be mixed up with all that push?”
“Thereby hangs a tale, fortunately a short one. The three girls sailed down to Beccles, and, I thought, were away from the possibility of mischief. Unfortunately, Miss Menzies conceived the idea that they ought to come back and form a bodyguard for me. They did return, and Kitty was captured when, against all advice, she went for a walk alone into Stalham, to purchase provisions for their boat.”
“You mean she was kidnapped in broad daylight, then?”
“Well, no; rather, at dusk. The provisions were beer.”
“Ah, I see. And how long had she been with the devil lot?”
“Only that one evening, thank goodness. They had another virgin in stock, as it were—which reminds me that I never had that list from Inspector Os about girls who have been missing from their homes—but it seems (for Bleriot has confessed it) that they knew it would annoy me more that they should have chosen Kitty.”
“I see. Well, we’ve still got to prove the murders against Bleriot, I suppose. It’s all right to have pinched him for kidnapping—I take it that’s what the charge will have to be?—there’s no law against founding a new religion, is there?—otherwise”—he chuckled and caught his aunt’s eye—“you could be had up yourself.”
“No, there’s no law against founding a new religion,” Mrs. Bradley answered. “But do you mean to tell me that you do not realise the most important thing of all?”
“What’s that?”
“We have not caught the worst of these people yet, child; only the decoy ducks.”
“The—? That reminds me of something, but I don’t know what”
“It reminds me of something, too, but I do know what,” replied his aunt, handing him his tobacco pouch as he finished the cokernut chips and tossed the bag into the water. “Your untidy, anti-social methods of consigning waste paper to the deep would offend Alice Boorman’s sense of tidiness and civic responsibility,” she added sternly.
Jonathan paused in the act of filling his pipe, and glanced at her curiously.
“You’ve got something on your mind,” he said. “What is it?”
“I’m glad I sent those girls home,” said his aunt, with apparent irrelevance. “I wish we could have exercised the same authority over Deborah.”
“I’m all right,” said her niece by marriage, looking up from her place in the well, where she sat, wearing sunglasses, reading a novel. “I did exactly as I was told in Norwich, refused to see anybody, locked my bedroom door every second I was alone, and behaved in all respects like a well-disposed idiot child. But here I am with you again, and this time if there’s fun I’m going to be in the thick of it.”
“Yes, and nice fools we shall look, if they kidnap you,” said
her husband.
“It wouldn’t be any use. I mean, I’m no longer—”
“Hush! Don’t be coarse. The higher education tends to broaden women’s minds in a most undesirable way,” said Jonathan, grinning.
“Well, anyhow, you’ve caught the kidnappers.”
“You’ve just heard Aunt Adela say that the biggest fish didn’t come into the net. We should be completely sunk if he collected a low gang, spirited you from our midst, and then held us up on the strength of it. No, my girl. You’re getting out of all this while the going’s good. You’ll only queer our patch if you stay. How long will it take you to pack your bags?”
“I say, you are going to have some fun, aren’t you?” said Deborah, but not at all resentfully. “I can pack my bags in half an hour, I suppose, and go right away now. There’s no earthly reason why not, except the mere fact that I’d much rather stay and take a chance with you, and that, in fact, I am going to stay and take a chance. I am all for the equality of the sexes, especially when it comes to sharing dangers.”
The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley) Page 21