Give the Devil His Due (41 page)

Not unexpectedly there was mayhem as customers surged for either the werewolf or the exit. Rowland slipped quietly into the space they'd identified, and waited.

A staff member emerged to verify and demonstrate that the wax werewolf had not come to life and calm was duly restored, though the air was charged with the extra thrill of possibility. Many patrons left, whether it was because the waxworks was closing or because of residual concern that other exhibits would animate, was difficult to determine. Edna departed on Errol Flynn's arm and Clyde and Milton followed soon after. The House of the Macabre was cleared, the lights switched off and the doors secured.

When he'd heard nothing for a minute or two, Rowland used his lighter to check his watch making a vague mental note to have the cracked crystal replaced. He had half an hour from now to signal, or Clyde would summon the police, which would be embarrassing if the only felony was his.

He waited where he was for a further ten minutes and then stepped out, wishing he'd thought to bring a torch. Fumbling his way to a window he made the first signal, again checking the time as he did so. As his eyes adjusted, the wax figures became an ominous presence, unnerving though he knew they were lifeless. Rowland resolutely ignored the grotesques and monstrous manifestations, looking instead for the arched exit that led into the area in which he'd encountered the weeping Daisy Forster. He made his way through the arch, picking out the denser darkness of the prohibited stairwell, occasionally groping some monster or other in his stumbling progress. He thought briefly about trying to find the Greek Room but decided against it. Better to see what was upstairs.

Rowland headed up the narrow stairwell using the feeble illumination from his cigarette lighter to gauge the steps. It was probably fortunate he didn't smoke—at least the lighter was full. He emerged into the hallway of the second floor. Two doors. The first led to what was a small office as far as he could tell: filing cabinets, a roll-top desk, a coat rack on which were hung what appeared to be long black gowns and pointed hoods. Rowland stiffened. The Fascist Legion had worn similar costumes when they'd dealt the New Guard's justice to Communists and other opponents of the movement. Could Milton be right, after all? Was Campbell behind all this?

Though it had only been twenty-five minutes since he last signalled, he did so again via the office's window, before he crossed the corridor and opened the other door. The room was pitch black. He couldn't even make out the outline of windows. He used his lighter to find the ceiling light cord and risked pulling it on. Rowland breathed, relieved when he saw that all the windows had been blacked out. He closed the door behind him. Though smaller than he expected, considering there seemed to be only two rooms on this upper floor, the chamber was still a reasonable size. The floor and the ceiling were painted with pentagrams and other symbols, and an imposing altar occupied the centre of the space.

Rowland knew he had roughly twenty-eight minutes before he'd have to return to the office and signal again. He examined the marble-topped altar—a curious piece of furniture indeed. Its base was carved with demonic figures which declared absolutely that this was a place where black magic was practised. Conspicuously placed atop the altar was a copy of Aleister Crowley's
Magick in Theory and
Practice
. Rowland didn't know the title but had heard of the notorious occultist and recalled that Inky Stephensen had mentioned publishing his work at one time.

It struck Rowland that the room was unexpectedly neat, no cobwebs or bloodstains, that sort of thing. Perhaps witches were naturally tidy, he reasoned, countering the tension with idle flippancy—they carried brooms, after all.

The walls around him were panelled with cedar. It was unusual for the age and style of the building, though the room might well have been refurbished. Rowland paced the perimeter. It was then he noticed the scrap of fabric caught between two panels on the far wall. Pulling out his pocketknife, he slid the blade into the barely discernible join. It met no resistance—there was no wall behind the panelling. He pushed on the opposite side of the panel and it gave, revolving around a pivot to reveal a hidden adjunct to the room. Large enough to accommodate six cubicles each housing telephones. Rowland applied the same principle to other panels along the same wall, discovering behind them blackboards, more telephones and totes. And he realised he was standing in an illicit SP bookmakers' den. He laughed. It was a quite brilliant disguise. A coven seemed at home in a House of the Macabre. It explained the afterhours comings and goings which most people would be too frightened to investigate. Though he was pretty sure witchcraft was illegal, it was unlikely it would interest the police as much as an illicit bookmaker. The discovery also explained what White might have been doing here.

Rowland closed up the panels. He was not due to signal again for at least thirteen minutes, but there was no point lingering. It was not until he stepped into the corridor that he realised the lights on the floor below had been turned on, and there were voices and movement on the stairs. There was no time for anything but to retreat into the room from which he had just emerged. He shut the door, pulled the light cord and crouched behind the satanic altar.

The voices became louder, interspersed with drunken laughter. All Rowland could do was hope they would go directly into the office… but that hope proved in vain.

The door was pushed open and Rowland heard a number of people enter. He knew then that discovery was inevitable. He braced himself.

The light was switched on. The first figure to walk around the altar was wearing women's shoes. Beyond that, she wore full-length black robes and an owl-like facemask complete with beak. The lips beneath the beak twisted in horror and screamed.

Rowland had no time to ponder the irony of someone dressed as a ghoul being frightened by a man in a three-piece suit. He broke for the door. Intercepted, he was tackled to the ground and then dragged to his feet under restraint.

Someone wearing a Horus mask pushed the point of a straight dagger against his throat.

“What the hell are you doing here?” snarled a man whose mask resembled the face of a goat.

Rowland said nothing.

“Who sent you?” the goat demanded.

“No one.”

“What were you looking for?”

The owl whispered in the goat's ear. He nodded. “Well, you are in a great deal of trouble boy. Your soul is in peril.”

A second voice, from behind a cat mask. “Do you know how we punish interlopers who dare to trespass into our magic circle?” Despite the dagger poised at his throat, Rowland fought the impulse to laugh. Bookmakers invoking magic circles… it was absurd. But he did know his chances were better if they didn't realise he'd seen behind the panelling. So he didn't laugh and he tried to look concerned by the threat of black magic.

“What are you doing here?” the cat asked.

A right hook to the jaw and Rowland reeled.

“You better answer darling,” the owl advised.

Rowland wiped the blood from his lip. He met the cat's eyes through the holes in its mask. “I want to join.”

“Join what?”

“Your coven.”

“What?”

Rowland scrambled through his paltry knowledge of the occult. “There only appears to be nine of you,” he said making a quick headcount. “A coven requires thirteen. It seems to me that you need members to complete your… circle.”

The cat hit him again. “We have all the members we need.”

Rowland shook his head to settle the ringing in his ears. Clyde would go for the police soon if he hadn't already. “Oh, I say. Terribly sorry—how embarrassing. I'll just be on my way then.”

A third blow, to the stomach this time. “You have a smart mouth. I ask again, for the last time, what the hell are you doing here?”

Rowland staggered as old bruises were impacted by the punch. Gasping he tried another tack. “A wager. There are rumours about this place with that chap being killed and all.” He paused to cough, to catch his breath and think swiftly. “One of the fellows at my club wagered that I wouldn't have the courage to spend the night. A gentleman can't be called a coward, after all…”

Anonymous eyes behind the masks all stared at him. Fleetingly Rowland wondered if this was what White last saw. They whispered among themselves. Rowland strained to catch any stray word, but he could pick up nothing.

The figure in the bear mask spoke to him. The voice was male, angry and Rowland had heard it before. “You're bloody Rowland Sinclair.”

“Yes.” Rowland's voice did not betray his growing panic. He struggled to place the voice.

“What do you want, Sinclair?”

“What I said at the outset. I have an interest in the occult,” Rowland maintained the lie steadily, his eyes fixed on the slits in the bear mask. He was a poker player—he knew how to bluff and he wanted the bear to speak again. “I met Aleister Crowley when I was in England. We got on rather famously. I had heard a coven operated from here. It's not as if I could apply for membership through conventional channels, so I thought I'd come along and observe. You are a real coven, aren't you?”

Perhaps the bear realised that his voice had been recognised because he didn't reply.

Horus raised his arms. “We are servants of Satan! We are the children of Hell!”

Rowland nodded slowly wondering where the ludicrous pantomime would lead.

“You should never have come here Sinclair,” said the wolf. “Now we're going to have to make sure you don't betray us.”

“I say we kill him, offer him as a sacrifice,” crooned the owl. “Like we did that reporter.”

“Shut up!” the bear snarled. “He's a friend of the mongrel.”

Rowland stiffened. “You killed White?”

To the Editor, Sir—

The great outcry against Sunday sport by some of the ministers of religion seems amazing when no voice is raised against the two greatest evils and enemies of the working man and his family—afterhours drinking and public-house betting. It seems incredible that the Ministerial Association has remained silent and let this huge cancer sap the morals of our young men and girls on the one hand, and steel the money from the workers' women and children and deprive them of the necessaries of life…

There is a bookmaker in practically every hotel and club in Broken Hill to get the cash that should go to feed and clothe the children (in lots of cases) of the workers, and non-workers trying to pick winners with the endowment money. The bookmakers flaunt around in their expensive cars, exhibiting their ill-gotten gains, procured at the expense of the women and children…

The reverend gentlemen have, in my humble opinion, worried about the “fly'” and permitted the human blood-sucking spiders to have a free go.

Yours, etc.,

“DECEMBER.”

Barrier Miner, 1934

____________________________________

T
he wolf grabbed Rowland by the throat. “The devil requires his tribute.”

Rowland began to reconsider his assumption that these men, and at least one woman, were playing at the occult.

The wolf motioned the owl. “Sinclair wants to join the coven. Let's give him our highest honour.”

The dagger was held again to Rowland's throat, his protests silenced with a blow to the ribs. He was confused now. This was all happening too quickly and too inconsistently with what he'd seen behind the panel… but some part of him knew instinctively that it would be more dangerous to reveal what he'd discovered. A rubber mask was thrust over his face and tied tightly at the back. Through the restriction of inadequate eye slits, everything he saw became all the more surreal—altered and threatening. Black and white images of White in death came too easily to mind.

“Look here…” Rowland tried feebly to negotiate.

“Speak again and we'll cut out your tongue,” the cat warned.

They forced him on to the altar and the wolf cursed him, calling on Satan to accept Rowland Sinclair as an offering from his servants. The razor was raised.

“No… stop…”

The wail of sirens seemed to precede the crash below by only seconds. And then the shouts of police. The owl, the bear, the goat and a couple of bird-like creatures opened the windows and climbed out. The wolf pushed Rowland back. “Right, Sinclair, you give the name Alan Smith and it'll all work out fine. You say nothing, and neither will we.”

Rowland was disoriented. One moment he was about to be murdered as a ritual sacrifice and the next, the coven was offering to protect his identity and reputation.

The police found the altar room soon enough, bursting through the door in numbers. The officer in charge of the constables seemed young and, to be honest, mildly terrified. The wolf pulled off his mask to reveal a soft smiling face as he explained that they were members of a secret society carrying out an ancient rite. “We're not unlike the Freemasons, the Druids or the Oddfellows,” he said affably. “I know it must look a little peculiar, but there's really nothing to be alarmed about.”