Authors: Dennis Wheatley
Her fingers had found the crucifix but they did not grip it. With a supreme effort, she fought down an impulse to let her mouth open in a scream. She would have known anywhere the shoes that Ratnadatta had on. They had belonged to her dead husband.
Taking a sudden resolution, she withdrew her hand from
the crucifix and closed her bag. Then, in a husky voice that belied her words, she said: ‘I’m not frightened. It’s only that I was not expecting you this evening. Let’s get a taxi.’
Shoes had been one of Teddy’s few extravagances. It had been his custom to have a pair made for him once a year by Lobb of St. James’s Street, and this last pair had been spoiled by an infuriating accident. The second time he had had them on he had been putting a broken kitchen plate in the dustbin; the lid of the bin had dropped back unexpectedly, knocking the pieces of plate from his hand, and the largest had fallen on the toe-cap, making an inch-long gash across the highly glazed leather. She had polished the shoe afterwards a dozen times in the hope of working the scar out, but it remained as a dark streak that there was no disguising, so he had said that he would take the shoe back to Lobb’s and have a new toe-cap put on. That had been about a month before his death, and during those last weeks his mind had been so pre-occupied with the work on which he was engaged that he had never done so. And now Ratnadatta was wearing those shoes.
It was the proof of what Mary had long suspected. Teddy
had
met his death at the hands of the Brotherhood of the Ram. More, it showed that Ratnadatta had been personally concerned in his murder. The Indian must have noticed that Teddy had about the same size feet as himself, suddenly coveted the pair of fine, almost new, hand-made shoes and exchanged them for his own before Teddy’s body had been taken down to the docks.
In another moment Mary would have drawn the crucifix from her bag and defied Ratnadatta, but this sudden revelation caused an immediate change in her mental attitude. Fear of what might happen to her if she involved herself further with the Brotherhood, and an increasing sense of the hopelessness of pitting her wits against such a powerful organisation, had determined her to keep her promise to Barney, for his having let her down had no bearing on that: but now, her five weeks of anxious probing had suddenly brought results so definite that she could not possibly
ignore them. In less than a minute, she had nerved herself afresh to take up once more her dangerous task. No matter what befell her, she must continue her association with the Satanist and worm her way into their confidence until she obtained the full story of Teddy’s murder.
Still in a daze, she accompanied Ratnadatta out into the street and, after waiting a few minutes, they got a passing taxi. Her previous visits to the Temple had been after dark, but they were on their way there much earlier now and it was still daylight; so he turned to her and said:
‘To blindfold you this evening would not be good. The taximan perhaps see and think something funny. Almost now you are one off us, so no great matter if you know where the Temple ees. Should you fail in test, then I hypnotise you and you forget place to weech you haf been taken. If your failure off test ees not too bad, perhaps you be permitted later to take a second time. But you will not fail. I haf full confidence.’
His words had the effect on Mary of a further shot of a stimulating drug. That she was to be allowed to know the whereabouts of the Temple came as a swift first payment for her renewed resolution to carry on with her dangerous mission. It determined her to face the test boldly and go through with it if she possibly could; so that afterwards there would be no question of depriving her of that valuable knowledge. But her mind was still half engaged on the shoes.
After Verney had broken the news of Teddy’s death to her, Inspector Thompson of the Special Branch had called and informed her that he was conducting the official enquiry. She had given him all the help she could by making a long statement and, on two subsequent occasions before she left Wimbledon, he had come to the flat again to ask her further questions. On one of these he had told her that, in due course, Teddy’s clothes would be returned to her but for the time being they wished to keep them at the Yard to complete various tests, and she had thought no more of the matter.
Now she realised that, had the clothes been sent back, or shown to her, she would at once have spotted that the shoes taken from Teddy’s feet were not his own; whereas the police, having no reason to suppose that a substitution had taken place, must still be ignorant of that fact. It dawned on her then that not only did Ratnadatta’s possession of Teddy’s shoes indicate that he had been an accomplice in the murder; those that the police held were almost certain to be his and, if so, they constituted most damning evidence against him. They were a rope round his neck, and she now had only to let Colonel Verney know of her discovery for it to lead to the Indian’s arrest.
This thought fired a train of new ones. She need not become a Sister of the Ram, after all. By another visit to the Temple she could have hoped only to pick up a hint. No one there would tell her what had actually happened to Teddy until they knew her well enough to trust her fully. To get that far she would have to submit to initiation and attend several more meetings. Even then she might not secure anything approaching such concrete evidence as was provided by this exchange of shoes. A merciful God had taken her will for the deed, sparing her the ordeal of debasing herself and participating further horrible blasphemies. The job she had set herself to do was as good as done. She need not even go again to the Temple that evening – only she could manage to get away from Ratnadatta.
Better still – the idea sprang to her mind – have him arrested. As soon as she saw a policeman she would hammer on the taxi window for the driver to stop and shout to the policman for help. When he come running up she would identify the shoes on Ratnadatta’s feet as her husband’s denounce him as a murderer, and have him taken into custody.
The taxi had headed south down Collingham Road and was now running through the Boltons. It was a quiet residential district, but she hoped that she would sight a policeman
either as they crossed, or turned into, the busy Fulham Road.
Before they reached it, another thought struck her. What if the policeman refused to believe her? Ratnadatta was no fool. It was certain he would say that she was suffering from delusions and he was taking her to a nursing home, or some such story. Could the policeman refuse to take them to the Station? That seemed unlikely. Yet he might. And, if he did, on that one cast she would have lost everything. She could refuse to re-enter the taxi with Ratnadatta but, before she could get hold of Colonel Verney, the Indian would have got rid of the tell-tale shoes and be calling on the Great Ram to exert his terrible powers against her.
Reluctantly she decided that she dared not risk such a gamble. She must free herself from Ratnadatta in some other way, so that he would have no suspicion that she was anything other than he believed her to be. Then she would go straight to Colonel Verney.
A sudden illness was the thing. A pretended heart attack? No, that would be overdoing it. She had assured Ratnadatta, when he had questioned her about her health on the evening when he had given her dinner, that physically she was as sound as a bell. At the time she had wondered why he had asked, but later realised that he had done so as a precaution against having a young woman on his hands who might collapse from fright at the sight of the black imp. But a faint. She could preface it by saying she felt ill owing to overwork. The reluctance she had shown to come with him would substantiate that. If she pretended to pass out for long enough, that should do the trick. It could be taken as certain that he had not told the taxi man to drive up to the mansion, and he could not carry her the last quarter of a mile; so he would have no option but to take her home.
By this time they had traversed Park Walk, and were crossing the Kings Road towards the river. As they reached the Chelsea Embankment and turned south-west along it, another thought struck her. She was being taken to the
Temple with her eyes unbandaged. If she played her bluff and it succeeded she would lose the chance of finding out where the mansion lay. And she had no idea where Ratnadatta lived. The police should be able to pick him up at Mrs. Wardeel’s on the coming Tuesday evening; but, even under intensive questioning, he might refuse to disclose the whereabouts of the Temple and to give any information about his fellow Satanists, some of whom must have been his accomplices in Teddy’s murder.
Henry of Navarre, she remembered, had cynically remarked that ‘Paris was worth a Mass’. Compressing her lips she decided that to ensure the round-up of the Brotherhood would be compensation enough for almost any degrading act she might be called on to perform as an earnest of her willingness to serve Satan. Ratnadatta had repeatedly assured her that her initiation would not come until later, and he had even said a few minutes back that he expected her business to be through soon after nine. He had not lied to her about last time, so she had no reason to suppose that he was doing so now.
All being well, if Colonel Verney was at home she could be with him by ten o’clock. It should not take him long to get Scotland Yard moving. By eleven, or half past at the latest, a police cordon could be thrown round the Temple; they would raid the place, catch the Brotherhood of the Ram near-naked in the midst of their Saturday, celebrations and, by midnight, have the whole evil crew in the bag.
Mary had barely made up her mind to take anything that might be coming to her during the next hour and a half in order to achieve this master stroke, when the taxi turned away from the river, ran for a few hundred yards up a sidestreet, and slowed to a stop. Since the night on which she had been received as a neophyte she had realised that the Temple could not be so far away from Sloane Square as North London but, all the same, she was surprised to find that it was actually within ten minutes’ drive of Cromwell Road. Having taken her resolve, she made no demur about getting out and, after Ratnadatta had paid off the taxi,
walking with him through the mean streets to the entrance to the alley which was now familiar to her.
In the courtyard at its end no cars were yet parked and, now that she saw the front of the mansion for the first time in daylight, she realised more fully how abandoned it appeared. Obviously none of its windows had been opened for many years. Some of the panes of glass were cracked and others missing. In the corners, generations of spiders had spun their webs and, in two places where panes were missing, sparrows had built nests. Behind all the grimy windows were stout wooden shutters that had once been painted white, but were now grey with dirt and mottled where the paint was peeling from them.
As Mary went up the cracked stone steps with Ratnadatta, she was intrigued to see at one side of the front door a small board on which faded capitals announced ‘
KEMSON’S DEPOSITORY FOR TITLE DEEDS
’, and underneath in script,
‘Antiquarian Society for Estate Research. Meetings Saturdays 9.00 p.m.’
It struck her as a clever cover for the permanently closed windows – as a casual observer would have assumed that behind them were rooms stacked high with dusty files – and for the Satanists who gathered there on Saturday nights since, despite the derelict appearance of the house, people in the immediate neighbourhood must have known that it was occupied and that on certain evenings both cars and pedestrians turned down the cul-de-sac to it.
Next moment, as Ratnadatta rang the bell, her mind was again filled with nervous fears about the test they intended to give her. Barney had said that to play with Black Magic was to play with filth as well as fire, and she knew that he was right. Whatever they asked her to do would, she felt sure, be against her conscience, and it might call for some act so physically disgusting that nausea would render her unable to accomplish it. Now, with a sudden sick feeling of apprehension, she followed Ratnadatta out from behind the blackout curtain into the brightly lit hall. But there she learnt that she was at least to be given a short
respite. As one of the Negro footmen advanced to take their coats, the Indian waved him aside and said to her:
‘We haf some while to wait, and it ees a fine evening. We go to the garden and if not too cold sit there a little.’ Then he took her along a passage to the back of the house and out through a door that opened on to a balustraded terrace from which three flights of steps, flanked with lead urns, led down to a lower level. Not unnaturally, Mary had expected to find the back of the house as derelict as its front, and the garden a tangle of weeds or, at best, a starved lawn with a few struggling trees and shrubs; but, on the contrary, it was as beautiful as any garden in a city could be.
The tall walls enclosed an area of about half an acre and above them could be seen only a few chimney-pots of neighbouring houses. There was no grass, for the garden was laid out in the Italian style with gravel walks, flower beds with box edgings, carved stone seats, fountains, trellissed arbours and many fine pieces of statuary. Down its middle ran a pleached alley; to one side there was a large swimming pool; on the other, an open area of equal size, paved with a mosaic in many colours, in the centre of which stood a stone plinth carrying a head crowned with a wreath.
The swimming pool was still empty and none of the flowers with which the beds were planted yet out; but, even so, on this last day of April, after several hours of sun, this wonderfully sheltered spot was a pleasant place to stroll in. After walking down the alley they came back across the open space and, waving a pudgy hand about it, Ratnadatta said:
‘To here on summer evenings, when fine, divans are brought out. It ees a good place, very good, for feast and revel. You will much enjoy.’ Then he pointed to the head on the plinth that dominated the mosaic-paved area, and added: ‘That ees Our Lord Satan in his aspect off Pan. That he smiles ees symbolic off the happiness he take in our pleasure.’