Authors: Dennis Wheatley
Such an attempt Verney regarded as not only unnecessary but both liable to upset Mary’s campaign and almost certainly doomed to failure; above all, the last thing he wanted was for the Satanists to be prematurely alarmed by a one-man raid, as that would mean losing the bulk of the bag. Therefore, the only way to make certain of preventing Barney from ruining the whole
coup
had been to tell him that, even if for the next few days Mary had to submit to being treated as though she was an inmate of a brothel, her early life had conditioned her to come through that mentally unharmed, and that she had actually expected that she might have to lend herself with apparent willingness to such treatment.
Barney meanwhile, having gone down in the lift, was walking, without thinking where he was going, along the street, desperately trying to reconcile his feelings for Margot with what he had just learnt about Mary.
During his long abortive watch for her in Cromwell Road the previous night, the belief that she was out dancing with some other man had brought home to him the fact that he really was in love with her; and, since his discovery that
morning that she had been carried off by Ratnadatta, the thought of what she might be going through as a prisoner of the Satanists had made him aware that he loved her desperately. But now? Could one possibly love a girl who had been a prostitute?
To do so was against all a man’s natural instincts. If one really loved a girl one wanted her for keeps. That meant marriage, and through the generations male mentality had been fashioned to demand that the future mother of a man’s children should be chaste. Basically that was his own view, but he recognised that standards of morality had grown far more lax since women had claimed equal rights with men in almost every sphere of life and, like most men of his age, he would have been quite ready to ignore the past if, on asking a girl to marry him, she had confessed to having already had a lover, or even several, providing they had been genuine love affairs and she had not made herself cheap. But for a girl to sell her body for money to anyone who cared to buy it, to go to bed night after night with a succession of different men, most of whom she did not even know by name, was a totally different matter. The thought of Mary’s having led such a life made him squirm, and he could not bring himself to believe that she had really ever done so.
There then came into his mind the first night that he had taken her to dinner at the Hungaria and how, in the taxi afterwards, when he had tried to kiss her, she had accused him of treating her like a tart. Her then seemingly unreasonable outburst was now explained, and with bitter cynicism he recalled the saying that there was ‘no prude so great as a reformed whore’. Yet she had been far from prudish on that last evening when they had been up in her flat together and, as they lay embraced upon the sofa for a while, she had returned his caresses with a fervour equal to his own.
Even so, C.B.’s horrible revelation did provide the basis for the intense sympathy she had shown for girls whom men paid to make use of without a thought of what might
happen to them afterwards should they get in the family way, and it now caused Barney to wonder if such a misfortune had ever befallen her. It was certainly a possibility and, if so, as from the secret report on Morden’s death he knew that Teddy had been married for four years, she must have been very young at the time, anyway not more than nineteen.
Visualising her at that age in such straits wrung his heart with pity, and he recalled C.B.’s remarking that she had ‘come up the hard way’. In an intelligent woman, given a reasonable amount of money, present appearances were’ nothing to go by, and her natural alertness of mind would have enabled her to make the best of any education she had been given. But perhaps she had been brought up in a slum and driven on to the streets by a drunken father before she was old enough to stand up for herself.
But no, that did not fit in with her having been a cabaret girl, and C.B. had made it clear that she had been not actually a professional prostitute, but a glamour-girl who needed a bit of extra money. That implied that she had not exposed herself to such depths of degradation but, theoretically at least, was guilty of a greater degree of moral turpitude; and Barney could not make up his mind if that made matters better or worse.
As far as the present was concerned, he had to acknowledge the justice of C.B.’s defence of her. ‘Coming up the hard way’ implied that she had derived little enjoyment from her youthful promiscuity; so it was fair to assume that anything of a similar nature that she might have let herself in for with a crew of depraved Satanists would mean for her a highly disagreeable experience. Yet she did not stand to better herself from it in any way. She had gone into the ring prepared to face this punishment in a gallant fight against evil and for no other reason.
For that, who could blame her? He certainly had no right to do so. They had met on the 5th April, barely a month ago, and the
affaire
on which they had tentatively entered had not developed into anything worthy of the
name until the previous week. There had not yet been a hint on either side that she might soon consent to become his mistress, much less that they should become engaged; so she was perfectly free to dispose of herself as she saw fit and he had not the faintest grounds for thinking of her as being unfaithful to him.
After blindly walking the streets for over an hour he pulled himself together and decided that he must get her out of his mind by throwing himself headlong into his routine work. On Saturday he must take part in the raid. He would see her then, and would have to do so on several occasions afterwards while the papers concerning the prosecution arising out of the raid were prepared. At such times he would endeavour to mask the mixed emotions it was certain she would arouse in him by a display of cheerful friendliness; but he would excuse himself on the plea of urgent work from making any further private dates with her. Then as soon as the case was over, he would no longer have to see her at all, so the sooner he practised forgetting her, the better.
But he could not forget her. For the rest of that day, and on the Thursday and Friday, and for the best part of the nights in between, she was never out of his mind for more than a few moments. At times he thought of her as a cold, callous, young harlot, slipping out of bed to pick the pockets of half-drunken men who had fallen asleep beside her; at others, as the innocent victim of some hulking brute who bullied her unmercifully and lived upon her immoral earnings. In his waking dreams there were times when he saw her with the Satanists, her mouth dripping from spilled red wine and her eyes brilliant from the aphrodisiacs they would have given her, revelling with wanton delight in their debaucheries; at others, waging a losing battle to hide her disgust and terror as they forced her to join them in unmentionable obscenities.
And through it all he knew he loved her. More than anything in the world he now wanted to gaze into her deep blue eyes again, to hear her laugh, to watch her, carrying herself
so erectly, as she walked with her firm springy step, to hear her voice with its faint familiar touch of Irish brogue, to hold her in his arms.
All this he could do, and more; providing only that she had not given herself away, so was still safe when the raid took place on Saturday. There was nothing to stop him resuming his
affaire
with her, and on an even better footing, as he would then be free to use Verney’s name as a link between them. Explantions would follow, and there would no longer be any necessity for them to deceive one another. She liked him; judging from their last meeting, more than liked him. With her past there could be no question of her having moral scruples. He would only have to go all out for her to make her his mistress.
But what then? He knew in his bones that this was different from his other
affaires;
not just a delightful pastime that could be entered on lightly and dropped with equal casualness. She had got under his skin, into his blood, captured his mind. If once he lived with her he would want to be with her always. How long would she be content to go on like that? A time would inevitably come when he would either have to marry or lose her.
Well, why shouldn’t he marry her? If Verney had said nothing of her past he might have done so; and, unless she had told him of it herself, the odds were that he would never have known anything about it. But the awful thing was that he did know. It was only on very rare occasions that the thought of his ancestors crossed his mind, but at this point in his tortured deliberations he saw them rising up out of their graves and screaming at him, ‘You cannot! You cannot! You cannot make an ex-prostitute a Countess of Larne!’
At midday on Saturday, looking tired and ill, he reported at the office. Verney told him that he had seen Otto that morning, and the scientist was convinced that Lothar had now returned to England. For a moment Barney feared that might mean a postponement of the raid; but C.B. said he meant to go through with it for two reasons. If Lothar
was in England it was quite on the cards that he would attend the Saturday orgy in Cremorne and, unless the place was raided, should he use a really clever disguise in going to, and coming away, from it the police might not spot him and so the chance of catching him would be lost. Secondly, even if they did not get him in the bag, by raiding the place they might secure papers which would inform them of other hideouts of his in England, in one of which he might be laid by the heels in the early hours of the morning.
Inspector Thompson arrived a few minutes later. All the arrangements for the raid were then completed and afterwards Barney, knowing that he would be up most of the night, returned to Warwick Square with the intention of making a light lunch and spending the afternoon dozing on his bed.
For half an hour he lay there, turning restlessly from side to side, once more a prey to the harassing speculations that had repeated themselves over and over again in his mind during the past three days. It then occurred to him that since early on Wednesday morning he had not been down to Cromwell Road; so there was just a possibility that Mary might have returned there. He knew it to be a forlorn hope but, to while away an hour or so of the time still to go before the raid, any action was better than lying there doing nothing. Slipping off the bed he put on his tie, coat, shoes and a light mackintosh and went out to find a taxi.
As usual during the day-time, the front door of the house in Cromwell Road was on the latch, so he walked straight in and upstairs. Using his little instrument he again picked the lock of the door to Mary’s flat. The sight of his unopened letter still lying face upwards on the mat told him at once that she had not been back there. Closing the door behind him he spent some minutes in having another look round. The rooms were just as he had left them, except that the roses had used up nearly all their water and were now drooping.
The sight of them brought the thought to his mind that, if all went well, she should be back there that night. Knowing
that for her the past week, at best, must have been one of intense strain from fear of being caught out and, at worst, one of physical inflictions coupled with mental anguish, he felt that she deserved something better to come home to than half-dead roses and stale food in her larder. To attend to the matter was the only decent thing to do; so he went downstairs in search of Mrs. Coggins.
He found her in her basement sitting-room, knitting a jumper while she watched T.V. When he appeared in the doorway she turned and gave him a peevish look, but made no move to switch off the blaring voice coming from the instrument. Above the din he shouted to her:
‘Mrs. Mauriac is coming home tonight. She sent me the key of her fiat and asked me to get a few stores in for her. Could you oblige me by lending me a shopping basket?’
Reluctantly Mrs. Coggins came to her feet and shouted back, ‘I was wondering wot’d become of ‘er. She’s bin gone a week now and, after your talk on Wednesday of bringin’ in the police, I was thinking I’d soon better go to them myself.’
‘I was worrying unnecessarily,’ Barney told her. ‘Mrs, Mauriac met with an accident while out with some friends and they took her to their home. That’s why she didn’t return last Saturday night; and, as she has been in bed ever since, she didn’t need to send for any of her clothes. Now, how about lending me something to shop with?’
Grumbling about not having ‘bin let know’, Mrs. Coggins produced a large string bag and with it Barney proceeded to the Earl’s Court Road. At a delicatessen store he bought a cold chicken, bacon, eggs, cheese and various other items, then he collected bread, milk, butter and fruit, and ended his round at a florists, from which he emerged with an armful of flowers.
Returning to Mary’s flat he threw away the food that had gone off, replaced it with his purchases, then arranged in both the sitting-room and bedroom the spring flowers he had bought. When he had finished, he made himself a cup of tea and, while he drank it, thought of the surprise and
pleasure which his efforts would give Mary on her return.
That thought, however, gave rise to another which had not before occurred to him. She would know that it was he who had made these preparations for her home-coming, and that would be bound to confirm her belief that he was in love with her. He was; there was no doubt about that; but, if he meant to break the
affaire
off, doing as he had was certainly not the way to set about it. He would have to see her home. He could not decently avoid doing so, and when she saw the flowers it was certain that she would kiss him for them. He could make some excuse not to come in, but he knew that he would want to, if only to see her just once more in these surroundings where they had had those few happy hours together.
Besides, he might have to come up. She might need help to climb all those stairs. If his worst fears were realised, shock, beatings and exhaustion had by now reduced her to a nervous wreck. Now he had made certain that she had not been back to her flat for a whole week, he felt more than ever convinced that C.B. was wrong in his contention that she had stayed on with the Satanists only because that would give her the chance to secure the evidence she was seeking. Had that been the case and she was still on friendly terms with them, what objection could they have had to her leaving the place for a few hours to collect the sort of personal belongings no woman likes to be without? The fact that she had not done so could only mean that they had demanded of her more than she was prepared to give willingly, so had resorted to force and then decided to keep her there until they had no more use for her.