Authors: Dennis Wheatley
Verney offered round his case of long cigarettes, took one himself, and said: ‘Maybe you’re right; but we’re wasting our time with these academical speculations. Let’s get back to earth. Whatever Lothar’s future intentions may be, he is endeavouring to secure a top-secret document, and coming here tomorrow to receive it from his brother. As their arrangements have all been made by telepathic communication, we have not got a scrap of evidence against either of them. The tape recordings would justify our holding Otto in preventative arrest, but what a man says in his nightmares cuts no ice in a court of law, except in support of something much more definite. So unless the document is actually handed over, Lothar will be able to cock a snook at us, walk off, and plan a further attempt to get hold of it which we may not be fortunate enough to find out about. As against that, if we do let Otto hand it over and Lothar manages to get away with it, quite apart from having let down our side, it will be bowler hats for all of us. Now, any suggestions?’
Barney held up his hand. ‘Yes, Sir. Otto has had a lousy deal all through. He’s resisted Lothar’s demands until he has been driven off his chump, and he seems a very decent sort of chap. If you let the show go on you’ll have to pinch him as well as Lothar and, whatever we may say afterwards about extenuating circumstances, he’ll have committed a treasonable act, so he’ll get a prison sentence. That strikes me as damnably unfair.’
‘I agree,’ Verney nodded, ‘and I couldn’t be sorrier for the poor devil. But, if we are to get the goods on Lothar, I see no way of letting Otto out. Still, if you’ve had a brainwave, let’s hear it.’
‘It is that you should see Otto tomorrow morning, tell him we know what is going on and offer him the chance both to keep in the clear himself and get his own back on his brother. If he agreed to play, instead of taking the real formula to the meeting he would hand over a dud one. If
Lothar gets away, there would be no harm done; but, if we catch him, you’ll have a clear case to put him away for a good long stretch.’
C.B. shook his head. ‘You are forgetting the psychic angle. Lothar checked up on Otto last night. That’s how he learnt that the meeting they had arranged for today was off. He may check up again tonight and again tomorrow, to make certain that Otto isn’t slipping and likely to let him down at the last moment. How far he can see into Otto’s mind, we don’t know. It’s not far enough, thank God, to register scientific experiments or he wouldn’t need to go to so much trouble to secure a written formula; but he must be highly sensitive to Otto’s vibrations. If he sensed a change of mind, suggesting that Otto was helping to lay a trap for him, he would not turn up and, if we miss this chance to catch him, we may never get another.’
‘All the same,’ said Forsby, ‘I agree with Sullivan that we ought to try to think of some way to protect Otto from himself.’
‘I only wish we could, Dick. But wait!’ C.B. suddenly sat forward and put his first finger alongside his big nose. ‘I believe I’ve got it, boys. Why shouldn’t we detain Otto just before he’s due to leave the Station, borrow the old raincoat and beret that Otto has been told to use as signs of his identity, dress up in them whichever of the Air Force police we have selected earlier as having a figure most like his, and send this chap to the rendezvous with a dud formula?’
The other two considered his suggestion for a moment, then Forsby objected. ‘When Lothar got near enough to see that it was not his brother he would realise that he was walking into a trap and turn and bolt for it. Remember, we couldn’t pinch him unless he had actually accepted the document.’
‘If he as much as touches it, that, backed up by the fact that he came to the rendezvous agreed on in the recordings, for a felonious purpose, will be all I need to cook his goose; and I believe that, with a little titivating, my idea might be made to work. There must be a path up to the top of the
hill. Our phoney Otto could sit with his back to it and his head in his hands, as though feeling frightful at the thought of the treachery he is about to commit. He’d pretend not to hear Lothar approach until he was only a few feet off, then suddenly break into muttered curses and throw the envelope at him,’
That’s it, C.B.!’ Barney exclaimed with enthusiasm. ‘Sorry, Sir, I mean. If only the Squadron-Leader can produce an Air Force police type with hair the same colour as Otto’s, and long enough so that we can trim it to make it look like his and…’
He got no further. The electric front-door bell shrilled through the bungalow, cutting him short.
As Forsby got up he shook his head. ‘It’s pretty wild, C.B. My chaps aren’t trained actors, you know. I’m afraid Lothar would smell a rat. Still, all’s fair in love and war, and I’d have no scruples in swearing that from a hideout I’d seen him pick up the document. Excuse me a minute while I answer the door and get rid of my caller. I expect it is someone who’s been at the dinner then had the idea of taking a nightcap off me.’
On going out to the hall he left the sitting-room door ajar, so when he opened his front door the others heard an agitated voice say, ‘Forsby … Squadron-Leader … I’m in trouble … serious trouble. I want to talk to you about it. May I come in?’
‘Please do,’ came Forsby’s reply. After a slight shuffling of feet, the sitting-room door swung back and there stood framed in it a tall, slim, fair-haired man of about forty. He had a fine head, heavy-lidded black eyes, a thin high nose, indrawn lips, a heavy jowl and forceful chin that was cleft in the centre.
At seeing other people there he became rigid, and he did not attempt to conceal his surprise and annoyance. But Forsby, who was behind him, blocking his retreat, said: ‘Mr. Khune, I’d like to introduce you to two friends of mine. Both of them are officers of the Security Service.’
Verney and Barney had risen from their chairs. The
Colonel said: ‘Mr. Khune, I’m very glad to have this opportunity of a talk with you. Anything that you intended to say to Squadron-Leader Forsby you may also say to my colleague and myself; although, actually, I don’t think you can tell us much that we don’t already know. You may regard it as unethical but there are times when, for the safety of the Realm, we have to adopt unorthodox measures. A copy was taken of the long statement you wrote and we have read it with understanding and deep sympathy. Also, recordings have been taken of your conscious or unconscious nightly – er, arguments, over the past ten days with your brother Lothar. So we know about your proposed meeting with him on Lone Tree Hill tomorrow. It is to prevent your needlessly incriminating yourself, and to prevent him from securing information the use of which would be contrary to this country’s interests, that we have come down from London.’
After a moment a nervous smile twitched at Otto Khune’s thin lips. ‘If that is the situation, gentlemen, it looks as if I’m to be saved a lot of talking. And, to be truthful, I was a little afraid that the Squadron-Leader here might not take what I had to say seriously; or, rather, might get the idea that I was well on the way to becoming a candidate for a straight-jacket.’
‘No,’ Forsby assured him, pulling out a chair. ‘We have been worrying about you for quite a time; but not with any thought that we might have to send you to a loony bin. Learning about the strange relationship which exists between you and your brother, and the use he hopes to make of it, have been much nearer driving me in that direction.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Otto gave another nervous smile. ‘But the thought that I can now speak freely about these things is a great relief to me.’
‘Whisky and soda?’ Forsby asked.
‘Thanks,’ the scientist replied.
As the Squadron-Leader mixed one he asked, ‘When you arrived here just now, what had you in mind to say to me?’
Khune took a gulp of his whisky, and shrugged. ‘I meant
to tell you what, apparently, you already know.’
‘And then?’ prompted Verney.
‘See if we couldn’t devise some means of trapping this villainous brother of mine.’
‘Good for you.’ C.B.’s thin face showed his pleasure and relief at this offer of co-operation.
Forsby touched the scientist gently on the shoulder, and asked, ‘Tell me, Khune, why did you wait until almost the last minute before coming to me like this? You could have saved yourself hours of mental torture if you had confided in me soon after the trouble started.’
Khune put a hand over his blue eyes for a moment, then gave himself a little shake. ‘Of course I ought to have. But it meant disclosing the past; telling you about Lothar’s visit to London in 1950. He had entered this country illegally and was acting as a Soviet agent then. It was my duty to have reported him to the police at once, but I didn’t. I was afraid that if that went on my record I’d be graded at the Ministry as unreliable and transferred to non-secret work. That may not mean very much to you people, but to a scientist like myself, who has spent years on a special type of research, it would have been heart-breaking.’
Verney stretched out his long legs. ‘Yes, I understand that; but later, when Lothar began to really plague you, surely…’
‘It was my battle,’ Khune broke in impatiently. ‘After what Lothar did to me last time, he hadn’t a hope in hell of persuading me to believe that his intentions were anything but evil; and I never even contemplated giving way to him. I’m not a traitor! And you’ve no right to infer that I am just because I didn’t come to Forsby earlier.’
‘I didn’t infer that.’ C.B.’s voice was as quiet as ever. ‘But you did give way to him, didn’t you? If it hadn’t been for the visit of this American you would have met him in London today.’
‘Yes, the pressure he was exerting on me was too great. By Thursday night things had reached a point where I knew that I had to do something about it or I’d no longer be
responsible for my actions. But I had no intention of taking the formula to London with me. I intended only to see Lothar at a house in Cremorne and have a show-down with him.’
‘Why should you have supposed that you would have a better chance of making him agree to leave you alone when face to face than during these arguments you have with him on the astral?’
Khune gave a faint smile. ‘Our psychic bond cuts both ways. There are times when I can overlook him and, when his mind is occupied with something else, he doesn’t know that I am doing so. He has become a Satanist. I’m convinced of that. I’ve seen him in a Satanic Temple with a lot of naked women crowding round him. He was seated on a throne dressed in black and wearing a big horned mask; and he had a small imp standing at his side.’
‘Bejasus!’ Barney exclaimed. ‘Then he is the Great Ram!’
The others looked at him enquiringly. ‘You remember, Sir?’ He turned towards C.B. ‘Ratnadatta’s circle is a Lodge of the Brotherhood of the Ram, and Mrs. M. described the Great Ram to me after her first visit to the place. This means that Lothar is the big shot of the whole outfit.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Khune remarked. ‘From his boyhood on he put an immense amount of effort into developing his occult powers, and he has a tremendously strong personality.’
Verney nodded. ‘Knowing what we do about him, I’m not surprised either. But please go on with what you were saying. Why did you feel that you would stand a better chance of overcoming him by going up to London?’
‘I felt almost certain that the Satanic Temple was in the house at Cremorne, but Lothar had given me a vision only of its outside; so I couldn’t be certain without making a check up. The sight of its front hall would have been enough and, if I’d been right, that would have given me the card I wanted. I could have told Lothar that to rid myself of him
I would no longer have to admit to the police that I had been in communication with a Russian agent. I could give them his description, lay an information that he was running a brothel there, and have it raided. I could have said that unless he agreed to let me alone that’s what I meant to do; then, instead of being a High Priest with a harem, he would find himself a wanted criminal on the run.’
‘To protect his secret, he might quite well have had your throat cut.’
‘I had planned to leave a letter addressed to the Commissioner of Police with the hall porter at my Club, before going to see Lothar; and I should have left instructions with the hall porter that, if I had not returned to collect the letter by four o’clock in the afternoon, he was to send it along to Scotland Yard by hand. Even a crew of Satanists would baulk at murdering a man when told that he had left a letter for the police saying that they might.’
‘True. And what if the place had turned out not to be the one in which you had seen the Temple?’
‘I’d have been no worse off than before. I’d have told him that I’d see him in hell sooner than let him have the formula.’
‘Yet last night, when he learned that you were still here, and turned on the heat, you gave way again and agreed to meet him tomorrow. Was that because he threatened to put a curse on you if you didn’t?’
‘Well, partly.’
‘If you meant to turn up without the formula, you must have expected that he would curse you just the same. And, as you have had no chance to check up on the interior of the house in Cremorne, you’d have had nothing with which to threaten him. So what did you expect to gain by agreeing to this meeting?’
Khune hesitated a second, then his blue eyes suddenly blazed, and he burst out, ‘The chance to kill him and get away with it. The odds against my being able to do so in London were too heavy. But, when he demanded that I should meet him down here, I felt that he was playing into
my hands. Out there on the moor, I could have done the job and buried the body in some gully. In these Welsh hills it would have been ten thousand to one against anyone finding it in my lifetime, and I’d have been free of him for good and all.’
‘I see,’ Verney nodded. ‘Having read your statement it had occurred to me that when you came face to face with him you might be tempted to adopt drastic measures, or even plan them in advance. Would you tell us now why you changed your mind tonight, and decided instead to confide in Forsby?’
The scientist began to twist his long knobbly-knuckled hands together. ‘Because a quick death is too good for the swine. He has always loathed discomfort, poor food, ugly clothes, and physical labour. Even more, to be baulked in his ambitions and condemned to a mind-rotting routine, with only common criminals as companions, would be a foretaste of hell for him. I can’t get him a long prison sentence; but you can. That is why I’m here instead of thinking out the most painful way to kill him.’