continued with Alfa Romeos, Daimlers, Hispanos and Bentleys, nearly
every one distinctive of its kind. At a low estimate there must have
been ?100,000 worth of motor-cars parked in that small area.
As they paused there for a moment a mutter of voices and a sudden
burst of laughter came from a ground-floor window. Rex tip-toed
softly forward across the gravel. De Richleau followed and,
crouching down with their heads on a level with the low sill, they
were able to see through a chink in the curtains into the room.
It was a long, low billiards-room with two tables, and the usual
settees ranged along the walls. Both tables were covered with white
cloths upon which were piles of plates, glasses, and an abundant
supply of cold food. About the room, laughing, smoking and talking,
were some thirty chauffeurs who, having delivered their employers at
the rendezvous, were being provided with an excellent spread to keep
them busy and out of the way.
The Duke touched Rex on the shoulder, and they tiptoed
quietly back to the shelter of the bushes. Then, making a circle
of the drive, they passed round the other side of the house, which
was dark and deserted, until they came again to the lighted windows
at the back which they had first seen.
The curtains of these had been more carefully drawn than those of
the billiards-room where the chauffeurs were supping, and it was
only after some difficulty that they found a place at one where they
were able to observe a small portion of the room. From what little
they could see, the place seemed to be a large reception-room, with
parquet floor, painted walls and Italian furniture.
The head of a man, who was seated with his back to the window,
added to their difficulty in seeing into the room but the glimpse
they could get was sufficient to show that all the occupants of it
were masked and their clothes hidden under black dominoes, giving
them all a strangely funereal appearance.
As the man by the window turned his head De Richleau, who was
occupying their vantage point at the time, observed that his hah-
was grey and curly and that he had lost the top portion of his left
ear, which ended in a jagged piece of flesh. The Duke felt that
there was something strangely familiar in that mutilated ear, but he
could not for the life of him recall exactly where he had seen it.
Not at Simon's party, he was certain but, although he watched the
man intently, no memory came to aid his recognition.
The others appeared to be about equal numbers of both sexes as
far as the Duke could judge from the glimpses he got of them as they
passed and repassed the narrow orbit of his line of vision. The
masks and dominoes made it particularly difficult for him to pick
out any of the Satanists whom he had seen at the previous party but,
after a little, he noticed a man with a dark-skinned, fleshy neck
and thin, black hair whom he felt certain was the Babu, and a little
later a tall, lank, fair-haired figure who was undoubtedly the
Albino.
After a time Rex took his place at their observation post. A
short, fat man was standing now in the narrow line of sight. A black
mask separated his pink, bald head from the powerful fleshy chin-it
could only be Mocata. As he watched, another domino came up, the
beaky nose, the bird-like head, the narrow, stooping shoulders of
which must surely belong to Simon Aron.
'He's here,' whispered Rex.
'Who-Simon?'
'Yes. But how we're going to get at him in this crush is more
than I can figure out.'
That has been worrying me a lot,' De Richleau whispered back.
'You see, I have had no time to plan any attempt at rescue. My whole
day has been taken up with working at the Museum and then organising
the discovery of this rendezvous, I had to leave the rest to chance,
trusting that an opportunity might arise where we could find Simon
on his own if they had locked him up, or at least with only a few
people, when there would be some hope of our getting him away. All
we can do for the moment is to bide our time. Are there any signs of
them starting their infernal ritual?'
'None that I can see. It's only a "conversation piece" in
progress at the moment.'
De Richleau glanced at his watch. 'Just on eleven,' he murmured,
'and they won't get going until midnight, so we have ample time
before we need try anything desperate. Something may happen to give
us a better chance before that.'
For another ten minutes they watched the strange assembly. There
was no laughter but, even from outside the window, the watchers
could sense a tenseness in theatmosphereanda strange suppressed
excitement. De Richleau managed to identify the Eurasian, the
Chinaman and old Madame D'Urfe with her parrot beak. Then it seemed
to him that the room was gradually emptying. The man with the
mutilated ear, whose head had obscured their view, stood up and
moved away and the low purr of a motor-car engine came to them from
the far side of the house.
'It looks as if they're leaving,' muttered the Duke; 'perhaps the
Sabbat is not to be held here after all. In any case, this may be
the chance we're looking for. Come on.'
Stepping as lightly as possible to avoid the crunching of the
gravel, they stole back to the shrubbery and round the house to the
place where the cars were parked. As they arrived a big car full of
people was already running down the drive. Another was in the
process of being loaded up with a number of hampers and folding
tables. Then that also set off with two men on the front seat.
Rex and De Richleau, crouching in the bushes, spent the best part
of half an hour watching the departure of the assembly.
Every moment they hoped to see Simon. If they could only identify
him among those dark shapes that moved between the cars they meant
to dash in and attempt to carry him off. If would be a desperate
business but there was no time left in which to make elaborate
plans; under cover of darkness and the ensuing confusion there was
just a chance that they might get away with it.
No chauffeurs were taken and a little less than ha!f the number
of cars utilised. Where me guests had presumably arrived in ones,
twos, and threes, they now departed crowded five and six apiece in
the largest of the cars.
When only a dozen or so of the Satanists were left the Duke
jogged Rex's arm. 'We've missed him I'm afraid. We had better make
for our own car now or we may lose track of them,' and, filled with
growing concern at the difficulties which stood between them and
Simon's rescue, they turned and set off at a quick pace through the
trees to the broken place in the wall.
Scrambling over, they ran at a trot down the lane. Once in the
car, De Richleau drove it back on to the main road and then pulled
up as far as possible in the shadow of the overhanging trees. A big
Delage came out of the park gates a hundred yards farther along the
road and turning east sped away through the village.
'Wonder if that's the last,' Rex said softly.
'I hope not,' De Richleau replied. They have been going off at
about two-minute intervals, so as not to crowd the road and make too
much of a procession of it. If it is the last, they would be certain
to see our lights and become suspicious. With any luck the people in
the Delage will take us for the following car if we can slip in now,
and the next to follow will believe our rear light to be that of the
Delage.' He released his brake, and the Hispano slid forward.
On the far side of the village they picked up the rear light of
the Delage moving at an easy pace and followed to the cross-roads
where they had met Clutterbuck an hour and a half earlier. Here the
car turned north along a by-road, and they followed for a few miles
upward on to the higher level of the desolate rolling grassland,
unbroken by house or farmstead, and treeless except for, here and
there, a coppice set upon a gently sloping hillside.
Rex was watching out of the back window and had assured himself
that another car was following in their rear, for upon that open
road motor headlights were easily visible for miles.
They passed through the village of Chitterne St. Mary, then round
the steep curve to the entrance of its twin parish, Chitterne All
Saints. At the latter the car which they were following switched
into a track runinng steeply uphill to the northeast, then swiftly
down again into a long valley bottom and up the other side on to a
higher crest. They came to a crossroads where four tracks met in
another valley and turned east to run on for another mile, bumping
and skidding on the little-used, pathlike way. After winding a
little, the car ahead suddenly left the track altogether and ran on
to the smooth short turf.
After following the Delage for a mile or more across the grass,
De Richleau saw it pull up on the slope of the downs where the score
or so of cars which had brought the Satanists to this rendezvous
were parked in a ragged line. He swiftly dimmed his lights, and ran
slowly forward, giving the occupants of the Delage time to leave
their car before he pulled up the Hispano as far from it as he dared
without arousing suspicion in the others. The car following, which
seemed to be the last in the procession, passed quite close to them
and halted ten yards ahead, also disgorging its passengers, Rex and
the Duke waited for a moment, still seated in the darkness of the
Hispano, then after a muttered conference, Rex got out to go forward
and investigate.
He returned after about ten minutes to say that the Satanists had
gone over the crest of the hill into the dip beyond, carrying their
hampers and their gear with them.
'We had better drive on then,' said the Duke, 'and park our car
with theirs. It's likely to be noticed if the moon gets up.'
'There isn't a rnoonfl Rex told him. 'We're in the dark quarter.
But it would be best to have it handy all the same.'
They drove on until they reached the other cars, all of whose
lights had been put out, then, getting out, set off at a stealthy
trot in the direction the Satanists had taken.
Within a few moments, they arrived at the brow of the hill and
saw that spread below them lay a natural amphitheatre. At the
bottom, glistening faintly, lay a small tarn or lake, and De
Richleau nodded understandingly.
This is the place where the devilry will actually be done without
a doubt. No Sabbat can be held except in a place which is near open
water.' Then the two friends lay down in the grass to watch for
Simon among the dark group of figures who were moving about the
water's edge.
Some were busy unpacking the hampers, and erecting the small
folding-tables which they had brought. The light was just sufficient
for Rex to see that they were spreading upon them a lavish supper.
As he watched, he saw a group of about a dozen move over to the left
towards a pile of ancient stones which, in the uncertain light,
seemed to form a rugged, natural throne.
De Richleau's eyes were also riveted upon the spot and, to his
straining gaze, it seemed that there was a sudden stirring of
movement in the shadows there. The whole body of masked, black-clad
figures left the lake and joined those near the stones, who seemed
to be their leaders. After a moment the watchers could discern a
tall, dark form materialising on the throne and, as they gazed with
tense expectancy, a faint shimmer of pale violet light began to
radiate from it.
Even at that distance, this solitary illumination of the dark
hollow was sufficient for the two friends to realise that the thing
which had appeared out of the darkness, seated upon those age-old
rocks, was the same evil entity that De Richleau had once taken for
Mocata's black servant, and which had manifested itself to Rex with
such ghastly clarity in Simon's silent house. The Sabbat was about
to commence.
16
The Sabbat
Straining their eyes and ears for every sound and movement from
the assembly in the dark shadows below, Rex and the Duke lay side by
side on the rim of the saucer-shaped depression in the downland.
As far as they could judge, they were somewhere about half-way
between the two hamlets of Imber and Tilshead, with Chitterne All
Saints in their rear and the village of Easterton, where Tanith had
crashed, about five miles to the north. The country round about was
desolate and remote. Once in a while some belated Wiltshire yokel
might cross the plain by night upon a special errand created by
emergency; but even if such a one had chanced to pass that way on
this Walpurgis-Nacht, the hidden meeting-place-guarded by its
surrounding hills-was far from the nearest track, and at that
midnight hour no living soul seemed to be stirring within miles of
the spot which the Satanists had chosen for the worship of their
Infernal Master.
In the faint starlight they could see that the tables were now
heaped with an abundance of food and wine, and that the whole crowd
had moved over towards the throne round which they formed a wide
circle, so that the nearest came some little way up the slope and
were no more than fifty yards from where the Duke and Rex lay
crouched in the grass.
'How long does it last?' Rex asked, beneath his breath, a little
nervously.
'Until cock-crow, which I suppose would be at about four o'clock
at this time of the year. It is a very ancient belief that the
crowing of a cock has power to break spells, so these ceremonies, in
which the power to cast spells is given, never last longer. Keep a
sharp look out for Simon.'
'I am, but what will they be doing all that time?'
First, they will make their homage to the Devil. Then they will
gorge themselves on the food that they have brought and get drunk on
the wine; the idea being that everything must be done contrary to
the Christian ritual. They will feast to excess as opposed to the
fasting which religious people undergo before their services. Look!
There are the leaders before the altar now.'
Rex followed the Duke's glance, and saw that half a dozen black
figures were placing tall candles-eleven of them in a circle and the
twelfth inside it-at the foot of the throne.
As they were lighted the twelve candles burned steadily in the
windless night with a strong blue flame, illuminating a circle of
fifty feet radius including the tables where the feast was spread.
Outside this ring the valley seemed darker than before, filled with
pitch-black shadows so that the figures in the area of light stood
out clearly as though upon a bright
circular stage.
'Those things they have lighted are the special black candles
made of pitch and sulphur,' muttered the Duke. 'You will be able to
smell them in a minute. But look at the priests: didn't I tell you
that there is little difference between this modern Satanism and
Voodoo? We might almost be witnessing some heathen ceremony in an
African jungle!'
While the crowd had been busy at the tables, their leaders had
donned fantastic costumes. One had a huge cat mask over his head and
a furry cloak, the tail of which dangled behind him on the ground;
another wore the headdress of a repellent toad; the face of a third,
still masked, gleamed bluish for a moment in the candle-light from
between the distended jaws of a wolf, and Mocata, whom they could
still recognise by his squat obesity, now had webbed wings sprouting
from his shoulders which gave him the appearance of a giant bat.
Rex shivered. 'It's that infernal cold again rising up the hill,'
he said half-apologetically. 'Say-look at the thing on the throne.
It's changing shape.'
Until the candles had been lit, the pale violet halo which
emanated from the figure had been enough to show that it was human
and the face undoubtedly black. But, as they watched, it changed to
a greyish colour, and something was happening to the formation of
the head.
'It is the Goat of Mendes, Rex!' whispered the Duke. 'My God!
this is horrible!' And even as he spoke, the manifestation took on a
clearer shape; the hands, held forward almost in an attitude of
prayer but turned downward, became transformed into two great cloven
hoofs. Above rose the monstrous bearded head of a gigantic goat,
appearing to be at least three times the size of any other which
they had ever seen. The two slit-eyes, slanting inwards and down,
gave out a red baleful light. Long pointed ears cocked upwards from
the sides of the shaggy head, and from the bald, horrible unnatural
bony skull, which was caught by the light of the candles, four
enormous curved horns spread out-sideways and up.
Before the apparition the priests, grotesque and terrifying
beneath their beast-head masks and furry mantles, were now swinging
lighted censers, and after a little a breath of the noisome incense
was wafted up the slope.
Rex choked into his hand as the fumes caught his throat, then
whispered: 'What is that filth they're burning?'
'Thorn, apple leaves, rue, henbane, dried nightshade, myrtle and
other herbs,' De Richleau answered. 'Some are harmless apart from
their stench, but others drug the brain and excite the senses to an
animal fury of lust and eroticism as you will see soon enough. If
only we could catch sight of Simon,' he added desperately.
'Look, there he is!' Rex exclaimed. 'Just to the left of the toad-
headed brute.'
The goat rose, towering above the puny figures of its unhallowed
priests, and turned its back on them; upon which one stooped
slightly to give the osculam-infame as his mark of homage. The
others followed suit, then the whole circle of Satanists drew in
towards the throne and, in solemn silence, followed their example,
each bending to salute his master in an obscene parody of the holy
kiss which is given to the Bishop's ring.
Simon was among the last, and as he approached the throne, Rex
grabbed De Richleau's arm. 'It's now or never,' he grunted. 'We've
got to make some effort. We can't let this thing go through.'
'Hush,' De Richleau whispered back. This is not the baptism. That
will not be until after they have feasted-just before the orgy. Our
chance must come.'
As the two lay there in the rough grass, each knew that the time
was close at hand when they must act if they meant to attempt
Simon's rescue. Yet, despite the fact that neither of them lacked
courage, both realised with crushing despondency how slender their
chances of success would be if they ran down the slope and charged
that multitude immersed in their ghoulish rites. There were at least
a hundred people in that black-robed crowd and it seemed an utter
impossibility to overcome such odds.
Rex leaned over towards the Duke and voiced his thoughts aloud,
'We're right up against it this time unless you can produce a
brainwave. We'd be captured in ten seconds if we tried getting Simon
away from this bunch of maniacs.'
'I know,' De Richleau agreed miserably. 'I did not bargain for
them all being shut up together in one room in that house or coming
on to this place in a solid crowd. If only they would split up a
little we might isolate Simon with just two or three of them, down
the rest, and get him away before the main party knew what was
happening; but as things are I am worried out of my wits. If we
charge in, and they catch us, I have not a single doubt but that we
should never be allowed to come up out of this hollow alive. We know
too much, and they would kill us for a certainty. In fact, they
would probably welcome the chance on a night like this to perform a
little human sacrifice in front of that ghastly thing on the stones
there.'
'Surely they wouldn't go in for murder even if they do practise
this filthy parody of religion?' whispered Rex incredulously.
De Richleau shook his head. 'The Bloody Sacrifice is the oldest
magical rite in the world. The slaying of Osiris and Adonis, the
mutilation of Attis and the cults of Mexico and Peru, were all
connected with it. Even in the Old Testament you read that the
sacrifice which was most acceptable to God the Father was one of
blood, and St. Paul tells us that "Without the shedding of blood
there is no remission".'
'That was just ancient heathen cruelty.'
'Not altogether. The blood is the Life. When it is shed,
energy-animal or human as the case may be-is released into the
atmosphere. If it is shed within a specially prepared circle, that
energy can be caught and stored or redirected in precisely the same
way as electric energy is caught and utilised by our modern
scientists.'
'But they wouldn't dare to sacrifice a human being?'
'It all depends upon the form of evil they wish to bring upon the
world. If it is war they will seek to propitiate Mars with a virgin
ram; if they desire the spread of unbridled lust-a goat, and so on.
But the human sacrifice is more potent for all purposes than any
other, and these wretched people are hardly human at the moment.
Their brains are diseased and their mentality is that of the hags
and warlocks of the Dark Ages.'
'Oh, Hell!' Rex groaned, 'we've simply got to get Simon out of
this some way.'
The Goat turned round again after receiving the last kiss,
holding between its hoofs a wooden cross about four feet in length.
With a sudden violent motion it dashed the crucifix against the
stone, breaking it into two pieces. Then the cat-headed man, who
seemed to be acting the part of Chief Priest, picked them up. He
threw the broken end of the shaft towards a waiting group, who
pounced upon it and smashed it into matchwood with silent ferocity,
while he planted the crucifix end upside down in the ground before
the Goat. This apparently concluded the first portion of the
ceremony.
The Satanists now hurried over to the tables where the banquet
was spread out. No knives, forks, spoons or glasses were in
evidence. But this strange party, governed apparently by a desire to
throw themselves back into a state of bestiality, grabbed handfuls
of food out of the silver dishes and, seizing the bottles, tilted
them to drink from the necks, gurgling and spitting as they did so
and spilling the wine down their dominoes. Not one of them spoke a
word, and the whole macabre scene was carried out in a terrible
unnatural silence, as though it were a picture by Goya come to life.
'Let's, creep down nearer,' whispered the Duke. 'While they are
gorging themselves an opportunity may come for us to get hold of
Simon. If he moves a few paces away from them for a moment, don't
try to argue with him, but knock him out.'
At a stealthy crawl, the two friends moved down the hillside to
within twenty yards of the little lake, at the side of which the
tables were set. The throne still occupied by the monstrous goat was
only a further fifteen yards away from them, and by the light of the
twelve black candles burning with an unnaturally steady flame even
in that protected hollow among the hills, they could see the
clustered figures sufficiently well to recognise those whom they
knew among them despite their masks and dominoes.
Simon, like the rest, was gnawing at a chunk of food as though he
had suddenly turned into an animal, and, as they watched, he
snatched a bottle of wine from a masked woman standing nearby,
spilling a good portion of its contents over her and himself; then
he gulped down the rest.
For a few moments Rex felt again that he must be suffering from a
nightmare. It seemed utterly beyond understanding that any cultured
man like Simon, or other civilised people such as these must
normally be, could behave with such appalling bestiality. But it was
no nightmare. In that strange, horrid silence, the Satanists
continued for more than half an hour to fight and tumble like a pack
of wolfish dogs until the tables had been overthrown and the ground
about the lakeside was filthy with the remaining scraps of food,
gnawed bones and empty bottles.
At last Simon, apparently three parts drunk, lurched away from
the crash and flung himself down on the grass a little apart from
the rest, burying his head between his hands.
'Now!' whispered the Duke. 'We've got to get him.'
With Rex beside him, he half rose to his feet, but a tall figure
had broken from the mass and reached Simon before they could move.
It was the man with the mutilated ear, and in another second a group
of two women and. three more men had followed him. De Richleau
gritted his teeth to suppress an oath and placed a restraining hand
on Rex's shoulder.
'It's no good,' he muttered savagely. 'We must wait a bit.
Another chance may come.' And they sank down again into the shadows.
The group about the tables was now reeling drunk, and the whole
party in a body surged back towards the Goat upon its throne. Rex
and De Richleau had been watching Simon so intently they had failed
to notice until then that Mocata and the half dozen other masters of
the Left Hand Path had erected a special table before the Goat, and
were feeding from it. Yet they appeared strangely sober compared
with the majority of the crowd who had fed beside the lake.
'So the Devil feeds, too,' Rex murmured.
'Yes,' agreed the Duke, 'or at least the heads of his priesthood,
and a gruesome meal it is if I know anything about it. A little
cannibalism, my friend. It may be a stillborn baby or perhaps some
unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered, but I would
stake anything that it is human flesh they are eating.'
As he spoke, a big cauldron was brought forward and placed before
the throne. Then Mocata and the others with him each took a portion
of the food which they had been eating from the table and cast it
into the great iron pot. One of them threw in a round ball which met
the iron with a dull thud.
Rex shuddered as he realised that the Duke was right. The round
object was a human skull.
'They're going to boil up the remains with various other things,'
murmured the Duke, 'and then each of them will be given a little
flask of that awful brew at the conclusion of the ceremony, together
with a pile of ashes from the wood fire they are lighting under the
cauldron now. They will be able to use them for their infamous
purposes throughout the year until the next Great Sabbat takes
place.'
'Oh, Hell!' Rex protested. 'I can't believe that they can work
any harm with that human mess, however horrid it may be. It's just
not reasonable.'
'Yet you believe that the Blessed Sacrament has power for good,'
De Richleau whispered. 'This is the antithesis of the Body of Our
Lord, and I assure you, Rex, that, while countless wonderful
miracles have been performed by the aid of the Host, terrible things
can be accomplished by this blasphemous decoction.'
Rex had no deep religious feeling, but he was shocked and
horrified to the depths of his being by this frightful parody of the
things he had been taught to hold sacred in his childhood.
'Dear God,' muttered the Duke, 'they are about to commit the most
appalling sacrilege. Don't look, Rex-don't look.' He buried his face
in his hands and began to pray, but Rex continued to watch despite
himself, his gaze held by some terrible fascination.
A great silver chalice was being passed from hand to hand, and
very soon he realised the purpose to which it was being put, but
could not guess the intention until it was handed back to the cat-
headed man. One of the other officiating priests at the infamy
produced some round white discs which Rex recognised at once as
Communion Wafers-evidently stolen from some church.
In numbed horror he watched the Devil's acolytes break these into
pieces and throw them into the brimming chalice, then stir the
mixture with the broken crucifix and hand the resulting compound to
the Goat, who, clasping it between its great cloven hoofs, suddenly
tipped it up so that the whole contents was spilled upon the ground.
Suddenly, at last, the horrid silence was rent, for the whole mob
surged forward shouting and screaming as though they had gone
insane, to dance and stamp the fragments of the Holy Wafers into the
sodden earth.
'Phew!' Rex choked out, wiping the perspiration from his
forehead. 'This is a ghastly business. I can't stand much more of
it. They're mad, stark crazy, every mother's son of them.'
'Yes, temporarily.'The Duke looked up again.'Some of them are
probably epileptics, and nearly all must be abnormal. This revolting
spectacle represents a release of all their pent-up emotions and
suppressed complexes, engendered by brooding over imagined
injustice, lust for power, bitter hatred of rivals in love or some
other type of success and good fortune. That is the only explanation
for this terrible exhibition of human depravity which we are
witnessing.'
'Thank God, Tanith's not here. She couldn't have stood it. She'd
have gone mad, I know, or tried to run away. And then they'd
probably have murdered her. But what are we going to do about
Simon?'
De Richleau groaned. 'God only knows. If I thought there were the
least hope, we'd charge into this rabble and try to drag him out of
it, but the second they saw us they would tear us limb from limb.'
The fire under the cauldron was burning brightly, and as the
crowd moved apart Rex saw that a dozen women had now stripped
themselves of their dominoes and stood stark naked in the candle-
light. They formed a circle round the cauldron, and holding hands,
with their backs turned to the inside of the ring, began a wild
dance around it anti-clockwise towards the Devil's left.
In a few moments the whole company had stripped off their
dominoes and joined in the dance, tumbling and clawing at one
another before the throne, with the exception of half a dozen who
sat a little on one side, each with a musical instrument, forming a
small band. But the music which they made was like no other that Rex
had ever heard before, and he prayed that he might never hear the
like again. Instead of melody, it was a harsh, discordant jumble of
notes and broken chords which beat into the head with a horrible
nerve-racking intensity and set the teeth continually on edge.
To this agonising cacophony of sound the dancers, still masked,
quite naked and utterly silent but for the swift movement of their
feet, continued their wild, untimed gyrations, so that rather than
the changing pattern of an ordered ballet the scene was one of a
trampling mass of bestial animal figures.
Drunk with an inverted spiritual exaltation and excess of
alcohol-wild-eyed and apparently hardly conscious of each other-the
hair of the women streaming disordered as they pranced, and the
panting breath of the men coming in laboured gasps-they rolled and
lurched, spun and gyrated, toppled, fell, picked themselves up
again, and leaped with renewed frenzy in one revolting carnival of
mad disorder. Then, with a final wailing screech from the violin,
the band ceased and the whole party flung themselves panting and
exhausted upon the ground, while the huge Goat rattled and clacked
its monstrous cloven hoofs together and gave a weird laughing neigh
in a mockery of applause.
De Richleau sat up quickly. 'God help us, Rex, but we've got to
do something now. When these swine have recovered their wind the
next act of this horror will be the baptism of the Neophytes and
after that the foulest orgy, with every perversion which the human
mind is capable of conceiving. We daren't wait any longer. Once
Simon is baptised, we shall have lost our last chance ot saving him
from permanent and literal Hell in this life and the next.'
'I suppose it's just possible we'll pull it off now they've
worked themselves into this state?' Rex hazarded doubtfully.
'Yes, they're looking pretty done at the moment,' the Duke
agreed, striving to bolster up his waning courage for the desperate
attempt.
'Shall we-shall we chance it?' Rex hesitated. He too was filled
with a horrible fear as to the fate which might overtake them once
they left the friendly shadows to dash into that ring of evil blue
light. In an effort to steady his frayed nerves, he gave a travesty
of a laugh, and added: 'The odds aren't quite so heavy against us
now they've lost their trousers. No one fights his best like that.'
'It's not the pack that I'm so frightened of, but that ghastly
thing sitting on the rocks.' De Richleau's voice was hoarse and
desperate. 'The protections I have utilised may not prove strong
enough to save us from the evil which is radiating from it.'
'If we have faith,' gasped Rex, 'won't that be enough?'
De Richleau shivered. The numbing cold which lapped up out of the
hollow in icy waves seemed to sap all his strength and courage.
'It would,' he muttered. 'It would if we were both in a state of
grace.'
At that pronouncement Rex's heart sank. He had no terrible secret
crime with which to charge himself, but although circumstances had
appeared to justify it at the time, both he and the Duke had taken
human life, and who, faced with the actual doorway of the other
world, can say that they are utterly without sin?
Desperately now he fought to regain his normal courage. In the
dell the Satanists had recovered their wind and were forming in the
great semi-circle again about the throne. The chance to rescue Simon
was passing with the fleeting seconds, while his friends stood
crouched and tongue-tied, their minds bemused by the reek of the
noxious incense which floated up from the hollow, their bodies
chained by an awful, overwhelming fear.
Three figures now moved out into the open space before the Goat.
Upon the left the beast-like, cat-headed high priest of Evil; upon
the right Mocata, his gruesome bat's wings fluttering a little from
his hunched-up shoulders; between them, naked, trembling, almost
apparently in a state of collapse, they supported Simon.
'It's now or never!' Rex choked out.
'No-I can't do it,' moaned the Duke, burying his face in his
hands and sinking to the ground. 'I'm afraid, Rex. God forgive me,
I'm afraid.'
17
Evil Triumphant
As the blue Rolls, number OA 1217, came to rest with a sickening
thud against the back of the big barn outside Easter-ton Village,
Tanith was flung forward against the windscreen. Fortunately the
Duke's cars were equipped with splinter-proof glass and so the
windows remained intact, but for the moment she was half-stunned by
the blow on her head and painfully 'winded' by the wheel, which
caught her in the stomach.
For a few sickening seconds she remained dazed and gasping for
breath. Then she realised that she had escaped serious injury, and
that the police would be on her at any moment. Her head whirling,
her breath stabbing painfully, she threw open the door of the Rolls
and staggered out on to the grass.
In a last desperate effort to evade capture, she lurched at an
unsteady run across the coarse tussocks and just as the torches of
the police appeared over the same hillock, which had slowed down the
wild career of the car, she flung herself down in a ditch, sheltered
by a low hedge, some thirty yards from the scene of the accident.
She paused there only long enough to regain her breath, and then
began to crawl away along the runnel until it ended on the open
plain. Taking a stealthy look over the hedge, she saw her pursuers
were still busy examining the car, so she took a chance and ran for
it, trusting in the darkness of the night to hide her from them.
After she had covered a mile she flopped exhausted to the ground,
drawing short gulping breaths into her straining lungs -her heart
thudding like a hammer. When she had recovered a little, she looked
back to find that the village and the searching officers were now
hidden from her by a sloping crest of down-land. It seemed that she
had escaped-at least for the time being-and she began to wonder what
she had better do.
From what she remembered of the map, the house at Chil-bury where
the Satanists were gathering preparatory to holding the Great Sabbat
was at least a dozen miles away. It would be impossible for her to
cover that distance on foot even if she were certain of the
direction in which it lay, and the fact that she was wanted by the
police debarred her from trying to seek a lift in a passing car if
she were able to find the main road again. In spite of her desperate
attempt to reach the rendezvous in the stolen Rolls, and the frantic
excitement of her escape from the police, she found to her surprise
that a sudden reaction had set in, and she no longer felt that
terrible driving urge to be present at the Sabbat.
Her anger against Rex had subsided. She had tricked him over the
car, and he had retaliated by putting the police on her track. She
realised now that he could only have done it on account of his
overwhelming anxiety to prevent her from joining Mocata, and smiled
to herself in the darkness as she thought again of his anxious,
worried face as he had tried so hard that afternoon on the river to
dissuade her from what she had only considered, till then, to be a
logical step in her progress towards gaining supernatural powers.
She began to wonder seriously for the first time if he was not
right, and that during these last months which she had spent with
Madame D'Urfe her brain had become clouded almost to the point of
mania by this obsession to the exclusion of all natural and
reasonable thoughts. She recalled those queer companions who were
travelling the same path as herself, most of them far further
advanced upon it, of whom she had seen so much hi recent times. The
man with the hare-lip, the one-armed Eurasian, the Albino and the
Babu. They were not normal any one of them and, while living
outwardly the ordinary life of monied people, dwelt secretly in a
strange sinister world of their own, flattering themselves and each
other upon their superiority to normal men and women on account of
the strange powers that they possessed, yet egotistical and hard-
hearted to the last degree.
This day spent with the buoyant, virile Rex among the fresh green
of the countryside and the shimmering sunlight of the river's bank,
had altered Tanith's view of them entirely; and now, in a great
revulsion of feeling, she could only wonder that her longing for
power and forgetfulness of her foreordained death had blinded her to
their cruel way of life for so long.
She stood up and, smoothing down her crumpled green linen frock,
did her best to tidy herself. But she had lost her bag in the car
smash, so not only was she moneyless but had no comb with which to
do her hair. However, feeling that now Rex had succeeded in
preventing her reaching the meeting-place he would be certain to
call off the police, she set out at a brisk pace away from Easterton
towards where she believed the main Salisbury-Devizes road to lie;
hoping to find a temporary shelter for the night and then make her
way back to London in the morning.
Before she had gone two hundred yards, her way was blocked by a
tail, barbed-wire fence shutting in some military enclosure, so she
turned left along it. Two hundred yards farther on the fence ended,
but she was again brought up by another fence and above it the steep
embankment of a railway line. She hesitated then, not wishing to
turn back in the direction of Easter-ton, and was wondering what it
would be best to do, when a dark, hunched figure seemed to form out
of the shadows beside her. She started back, but recovered herself
at once on realising that it was only a bent old woman.
'You've lost your way, dearie?' croaked the old crone.
'Yes,' Tanith admitted. 'Can you show me how I get on to the
Devizes road?'
'Come with me, my pretty.. I am going that way myself,' said the
old woman in a husky voice, which seemed to Tanith in some strange
way vaguely familiar.
'Thank you.' She turned and walked along the bridle-path that
followed the embankment to the west, searching her mind as to where
she could have heard that husky voice before.
'Give me your hand, dearie. The way is rough for my old feet,'
croaked the ancient crone; and Tanith willingly offered her arm.
Then, as the old woman rested a claw upon it, a sudden memory of
long ago flooded her mind.
It was of the days when, as a little girl living in the foothills
of the Carpathians, she had made a friend of an old gypsy-woman who
used to come to the village for the fair and local Saints' Days,
with her band of Ziganes. It was from her that Tanith had first
learned her strange powers of clairvoyance and second sight. Many a
time she had scrambled down from the rocky mount upon which her home
was set to the gypsy encampment outside the village to gaze with
marvelling eyes at old Mizka who knew so many wonderful things, and
could tell of the past and of the future by gazing into a glass of
water or consulting her grimy pack of Tarot cards.
Tanith could still see those pasteboards which had such
fascinating pictures upon them. The twenty-two cards of the Major
Arcana, said by some to be copies of the original Book of Thoth,
which contained all wisdom and was given to mankind by the ancient
ibis-headed Egyptian god. For thousands of years such packs had been
treasured and reproduced from one end of the world to the other and
were treasured still, from the boudoirs of modern Paris to the tea-
houses of Shanghai, wherever people came secretly in the quiet hours
to learn, from those who could read them, the secrets of the future.
As she walked on half unconscious of her strange companion,
Tanith recalled them in their right and fateful order. The Juggler
with his table-meaning mental rectitude; the High Priestess like a
female Pope-wisdom; the Empress-night and darkness; the
Emperor-support and protection; the Pope-reunion and society; the
Lovers-marriage; iheChariot-triumph and despotism; Justice, a winged
figure with sword and scales-the law, the Hermit with his lantern-a
pointer towards good; the Wheel of Fortune carrying a cat and a
demon round with it-success and wealth; Strength, a woman wrenching
open the jaws of a lion-power and sovereignty; the Hanged Man lashed
by his right ankle tp a beam and dangling upside down while holding
two money bags-warning to be prudent; Death with his scythe-ruin and
destruction; Temperance, a woman pouring liquid from one vase to
another-moderation; the Devil, batwinged, goatfaced, with a human
head protruding from his belly-force and blindness; the Lightning-
struck Tower with people falling from it-want, poverty and
imprisonment; the Star-disinterestedness; the Moon~speech and
lunacy; the Sun-light and science; the Judgement-typifying will; the
World, a naked woman with goat and ram below-travel and possessions;
then last but not least the card that has no number, the Fool,
foretelling dementia, rapture and extravagance.
Old Mizka had been a willing teacher, and Tanith, the child, an
eager pupil, for she had spent a lonely girlhood in that castle on
the hill separated by miles of jagged valleys difficult to traverse
from other children of her own postion, and debarred by custom from
adopting the children of the villagers as her playmates. Long before
her time she had learned all the secrets of life from the old gipsy,
who talked for hours in her husky voice of lovers and marriage and
lovers again, and potions to bring sleep to suspicious husbands and
philtres which could warm the heart of the coldest man towards a
woman who desired his caresses.
'Mizka," Tanith whispered suddenly. 'It is you-isn't it?'
'Yes, dearie. Yes-old Mizka has come a long way tonight to set
her pretty one upon the road.'
'But how did you ever come to England?'
'No matter, dearie. Don't trouble your golden head about that,
Old Mizka started you upon the road, and she has been sent to guide
your feet tonight.'
Tanith hung back for a second in sudden alarm, but the claw upon
her arm urged her forward again with gentle strength as she
protested.
'But I don't want to go! Not... not to the .,.'
The old crone chuckled. 'What foolishness is this? It is the road
that you have taken all your life, ever since Mizka told you of it
as a little girl. Tonight is the night that old Mizka has seen for
so many years in her dreams-the night when you shall know all
things, and be granted powers which come to few. How fortunate you
are to have this opportunity when you are yet so young.'
At the old woman's silken words, a new feeling crept into
every one distinctive of its kind. At a low estimate there must have
been ?100,000 worth of motor-cars parked in that small area.
As they paused there for a moment a mutter of voices and a sudden
burst of laughter came from a ground-floor window. Rex tip-toed
softly forward across the gravel. De Richleau followed and,
crouching down with their heads on a level with the low sill, they
were able to see through a chink in the curtains into the room.
It was a long, low billiards-room with two tables, and the usual
settees ranged along the walls. Both tables were covered with white
cloths upon which were piles of plates, glasses, and an abundant
supply of cold food. About the room, laughing, smoking and talking,
were some thirty chauffeurs who, having delivered their employers at
the rendezvous, were being provided with an excellent spread to keep
them busy and out of the way.
The Duke touched Rex on the shoulder, and they tiptoed
quietly back to the shelter of the bushes. Then, making a circle
of the drive, they passed round the other side of the house, which
was dark and deserted, until they came again to the lighted windows
at the back which they had first seen.
The curtains of these had been more carefully drawn than those of
the billiards-room where the chauffeurs were supping, and it was
only after some difficulty that they found a place at one where they
were able to observe a small portion of the room. From what little
they could see, the place seemed to be a large reception-room, with
parquet floor, painted walls and Italian furniture.
The head of a man, who was seated with his back to the window,
added to their difficulty in seeing into the room but the glimpse
they could get was sufficient to show that all the occupants of it
were masked and their clothes hidden under black dominoes, giving
them all a strangely funereal appearance.
As the man by the window turned his head De Richleau, who was
occupying their vantage point at the time, observed that his hah-
was grey and curly and that he had lost the top portion of his left
ear, which ended in a jagged piece of flesh. The Duke felt that
there was something strangely familiar in that mutilated ear, but he
could not for the life of him recall exactly where he had seen it.
Not at Simon's party, he was certain but, although he watched the
man intently, no memory came to aid his recognition.
The others appeared to be about equal numbers of both sexes as
far as the Duke could judge from the glimpses he got of them as they
passed and repassed the narrow orbit of his line of vision. The
masks and dominoes made it particularly difficult for him to pick
out any of the Satanists whom he had seen at the previous party but,
after a little, he noticed a man with a dark-skinned, fleshy neck
and thin, black hair whom he felt certain was the Babu, and a little
later a tall, lank, fair-haired figure who was undoubtedly the
Albino.
After a time Rex took his place at their observation post. A
short, fat man was standing now in the narrow line of sight. A black
mask separated his pink, bald head from the powerful fleshy chin-it
could only be Mocata. As he watched, another domino came up, the
beaky nose, the bird-like head, the narrow, stooping shoulders of
which must surely belong to Simon Aron.
'He's here,' whispered Rex.
'Who-Simon?'
'Yes. But how we're going to get at him in this crush is more
than I can figure out.'
That has been worrying me a lot,' De Richleau whispered back.
'You see, I have had no time to plan any attempt at rescue. My whole
day has been taken up with working at the Museum and then organising
the discovery of this rendezvous, I had to leave the rest to chance,
trusting that an opportunity might arise where we could find Simon
on his own if they had locked him up, or at least with only a few
people, when there would be some hope of our getting him away. All
we can do for the moment is to bide our time. Are there any signs of
them starting their infernal ritual?'
'None that I can see. It's only a "conversation piece" in
progress at the moment.'
De Richleau glanced at his watch. 'Just on eleven,' he murmured,
'and they won't get going until midnight, so we have ample time
before we need try anything desperate. Something may happen to give
us a better chance before that.'
For another ten minutes they watched the strange assembly. There
was no laughter but, even from outside the window, the watchers
could sense a tenseness in theatmosphereanda strange suppressed
excitement. De Richleau managed to identify the Eurasian, the
Chinaman and old Madame D'Urfe with her parrot beak. Then it seemed
to him that the room was gradually emptying. The man with the
mutilated ear, whose head had obscured their view, stood up and
moved away and the low purr of a motor-car engine came to them from
the far side of the house.
'It looks as if they're leaving,' muttered the Duke; 'perhaps the
Sabbat is not to be held here after all. In any case, this may be
the chance we're looking for. Come on.'
Stepping as lightly as possible to avoid the crunching of the
gravel, they stole back to the shrubbery and round the house to the
place where the cars were parked. As they arrived a big car full of
people was already running down the drive. Another was in the
process of being loaded up with a number of hampers and folding
tables. Then that also set off with two men on the front seat.
Rex and De Richleau, crouching in the bushes, spent the best part
of half an hour watching the departure of the assembly.
Every moment they hoped to see Simon. If they could only identify
him among those dark shapes that moved between the cars they meant
to dash in and attempt to carry him off. If would be a desperate
business but there was no time left in which to make elaborate
plans; under cover of darkness and the ensuing confusion there was
just a chance that they might get away with it.
No chauffeurs were taken and a little less than ha!f the number
of cars utilised. Where me guests had presumably arrived in ones,
twos, and threes, they now departed crowded five and six apiece in
the largest of the cars.
When only a dozen or so of the Satanists were left the Duke
jogged Rex's arm. 'We've missed him I'm afraid. We had better make
for our own car now or we may lose track of them,' and, filled with
growing concern at the difficulties which stood between them and
Simon's rescue, they turned and set off at a quick pace through the
trees to the broken place in the wall.
Scrambling over, they ran at a trot down the lane. Once in the
car, De Richleau drove it back on to the main road and then pulled
up as far as possible in the shadow of the overhanging trees. A big
Delage came out of the park gates a hundred yards farther along the
road and turning east sped away through the village.
'Wonder if that's the last,' Rex said softly.
'I hope not,' De Richleau replied. They have been going off at
about two-minute intervals, so as not to crowd the road and make too
much of a procession of it. If it is the last, they would be certain
to see our lights and become suspicious. With any luck the people in
the Delage will take us for the following car if we can slip in now,
and the next to follow will believe our rear light to be that of the
Delage.' He released his brake, and the Hispano slid forward.
On the far side of the village they picked up the rear light of
the Delage moving at an easy pace and followed to the cross-roads
where they had met Clutterbuck an hour and a half earlier. Here the
car turned north along a by-road, and they followed for a few miles
upward on to the higher level of the desolate rolling grassland,
unbroken by house or farmstead, and treeless except for, here and
there, a coppice set upon a gently sloping hillside.
Rex was watching out of the back window and had assured himself
that another car was following in their rear, for upon that open
road motor headlights were easily visible for miles.
They passed through the village of Chitterne St. Mary, then round
the steep curve to the entrance of its twin parish, Chitterne All
Saints. At the latter the car which they were following switched
into a track runinng steeply uphill to the northeast, then swiftly
down again into a long valley bottom and up the other side on to a
higher crest. They came to a crossroads where four tracks met in
another valley and turned east to run on for another mile, bumping
and skidding on the little-used, pathlike way. After winding a
little, the car ahead suddenly left the track altogether and ran on
to the smooth short turf.
After following the Delage for a mile or more across the grass,
De Richleau saw it pull up on the slope of the downs where the score
or so of cars which had brought the Satanists to this rendezvous
were parked in a ragged line. He swiftly dimmed his lights, and ran
slowly forward, giving the occupants of the Delage time to leave
their car before he pulled up the Hispano as far from it as he dared
without arousing suspicion in the others. The car following, which
seemed to be the last in the procession, passed quite close to them
and halted ten yards ahead, also disgorging its passengers, Rex and
the Duke waited for a moment, still seated in the darkness of the
Hispano, then after a muttered conference, Rex got out to go forward
and investigate.
He returned after about ten minutes to say that the Satanists had
gone over the crest of the hill into the dip beyond, carrying their
hampers and their gear with them.
'We had better drive on then,' said the Duke, 'and park our car
with theirs. It's likely to be noticed if the moon gets up.'
'There isn't a rnoonfl Rex told him. 'We're in the dark quarter.
But it would be best to have it handy all the same.'
They drove on until they reached the other cars, all of whose
lights had been put out, then, getting out, set off at a stealthy
trot in the direction the Satanists had taken.
Within a few moments, they arrived at the brow of the hill and
saw that spread below them lay a natural amphitheatre. At the
bottom, glistening faintly, lay a small tarn or lake, and De
Richleau nodded understandingly.
This is the place where the devilry will actually be done without
a doubt. No Sabbat can be held except in a place which is near open
water.' Then the two friends lay down in the grass to watch for
Simon among the dark group of figures who were moving about the
water's edge.
Some were busy unpacking the hampers, and erecting the small
folding-tables which they had brought. The light was just sufficient
for Rex to see that they were spreading upon them a lavish supper.
As he watched, he saw a group of about a dozen move over to the left
towards a pile of ancient stones which, in the uncertain light,
seemed to form a rugged, natural throne.
De Richleau's eyes were also riveted upon the spot and, to his
straining gaze, it seemed that there was a sudden stirring of
movement in the shadows there. The whole body of masked, black-clad
figures left the lake and joined those near the stones, who seemed
to be their leaders. After a moment the watchers could discern a
tall, dark form materialising on the throne and, as they gazed with
tense expectancy, a faint shimmer of pale violet light began to
radiate from it.
Even at that distance, this solitary illumination of the dark
hollow was sufficient for the two friends to realise that the thing
which had appeared out of the darkness, seated upon those age-old
rocks, was the same evil entity that De Richleau had once taken for
Mocata's black servant, and which had manifested itself to Rex with
such ghastly clarity in Simon's silent house. The Sabbat was about
to commence.
16
The Sabbat
Straining their eyes and ears for every sound and movement from
the assembly in the dark shadows below, Rex and the Duke lay side by
side on the rim of the saucer-shaped depression in the downland.
As far as they could judge, they were somewhere about half-way
between the two hamlets of Imber and Tilshead, with Chitterne All
Saints in their rear and the village of Easterton, where Tanith had
crashed, about five miles to the north. The country round about was
desolate and remote. Once in a while some belated Wiltshire yokel
might cross the plain by night upon a special errand created by
emergency; but even if such a one had chanced to pass that way on
this Walpurgis-Nacht, the hidden meeting-place-guarded by its
surrounding hills-was far from the nearest track, and at that
midnight hour no living soul seemed to be stirring within miles of
the spot which the Satanists had chosen for the worship of their
Infernal Master.
In the faint starlight they could see that the tables were now
heaped with an abundance of food and wine, and that the whole crowd
had moved over towards the throne round which they formed a wide
circle, so that the nearest came some little way up the slope and
were no more than fifty yards from where the Duke and Rex lay
crouched in the grass.
'How long does it last?' Rex asked, beneath his breath, a little
nervously.
'Until cock-crow, which I suppose would be at about four o'clock
at this time of the year. It is a very ancient belief that the
crowing of a cock has power to break spells, so these ceremonies, in
which the power to cast spells is given, never last longer. Keep a
sharp look out for Simon.'
'I am, but what will they be doing all that time?'
First, they will make their homage to the Devil. Then they will
gorge themselves on the food that they have brought and get drunk on
the wine; the idea being that everything must be done contrary to
the Christian ritual. They will feast to excess as opposed to the
fasting which religious people undergo before their services. Look!
There are the leaders before the altar now.'
Rex followed the Duke's glance, and saw that half a dozen black
figures were placing tall candles-eleven of them in a circle and the
twelfth inside it-at the foot of the throne.
As they were lighted the twelve candles burned steadily in the
windless night with a strong blue flame, illuminating a circle of
fifty feet radius including the tables where the feast was spread.
Outside this ring the valley seemed darker than before, filled with
pitch-black shadows so that the figures in the area of light stood
out clearly as though upon a bright
circular stage.
'Those things they have lighted are the special black candles
made of pitch and sulphur,' muttered the Duke. 'You will be able to
smell them in a minute. But look at the priests: didn't I tell you
that there is little difference between this modern Satanism and
Voodoo? We might almost be witnessing some heathen ceremony in an
African jungle!'
While the crowd had been busy at the tables, their leaders had
donned fantastic costumes. One had a huge cat mask over his head and
a furry cloak, the tail of which dangled behind him on the ground;
another wore the headdress of a repellent toad; the face of a third,
still masked, gleamed bluish for a moment in the candle-light from
between the distended jaws of a wolf, and Mocata, whom they could
still recognise by his squat obesity, now had webbed wings sprouting
from his shoulders which gave him the appearance of a giant bat.
Rex shivered. 'It's that infernal cold again rising up the hill,'
he said half-apologetically. 'Say-look at the thing on the throne.
It's changing shape.'
Until the candles had been lit, the pale violet halo which
emanated from the figure had been enough to show that it was human
and the face undoubtedly black. But, as they watched, it changed to
a greyish colour, and something was happening to the formation of
the head.
'It is the Goat of Mendes, Rex!' whispered the Duke. 'My God!
this is horrible!' And even as he spoke, the manifestation took on a
clearer shape; the hands, held forward almost in an attitude of
prayer but turned downward, became transformed into two great cloven
hoofs. Above rose the monstrous bearded head of a gigantic goat,
appearing to be at least three times the size of any other which
they had ever seen. The two slit-eyes, slanting inwards and down,
gave out a red baleful light. Long pointed ears cocked upwards from
the sides of the shaggy head, and from the bald, horrible unnatural
bony skull, which was caught by the light of the candles, four
enormous curved horns spread out-sideways and up.
Before the apparition the priests, grotesque and terrifying
beneath their beast-head masks and furry mantles, were now swinging
lighted censers, and after a little a breath of the noisome incense
was wafted up the slope.
Rex choked into his hand as the fumes caught his throat, then
whispered: 'What is that filth they're burning?'
'Thorn, apple leaves, rue, henbane, dried nightshade, myrtle and
other herbs,' De Richleau answered. 'Some are harmless apart from
their stench, but others drug the brain and excite the senses to an
animal fury of lust and eroticism as you will see soon enough. If
only we could catch sight of Simon,' he added desperately.
'Look, there he is!' Rex exclaimed. 'Just to the left of the toad-
headed brute.'
The goat rose, towering above the puny figures of its unhallowed
priests, and turned its back on them; upon which one stooped
slightly to give the osculam-infame as his mark of homage. The
others followed suit, then the whole circle of Satanists drew in
towards the throne and, in solemn silence, followed their example,
each bending to salute his master in an obscene parody of the holy
kiss which is given to the Bishop's ring.
Simon was among the last, and as he approached the throne, Rex
grabbed De Richleau's arm. 'It's now or never,' he grunted. 'We've
got to make some effort. We can't let this thing go through.'
'Hush,' De Richleau whispered back. This is not the baptism. That
will not be until after they have feasted-just before the orgy. Our
chance must come.'
As the two lay there in the rough grass, each knew that the time
was close at hand when they must act if they meant to attempt
Simon's rescue. Yet, despite the fact that neither of them lacked
courage, both realised with crushing despondency how slender their
chances of success would be if they ran down the slope and charged
that multitude immersed in their ghoulish rites. There were at least
a hundred people in that black-robed crowd and it seemed an utter
impossibility to overcome such odds.
Rex leaned over towards the Duke and voiced his thoughts aloud,
'We're right up against it this time unless you can produce a
brainwave. We'd be captured in ten seconds if we tried getting Simon
away from this bunch of maniacs.'
'I know,' De Richleau agreed miserably. 'I did not bargain for
them all being shut up together in one room in that house or coming
on to this place in a solid crowd. If only they would split up a
little we might isolate Simon with just two or three of them, down
the rest, and get him away before the main party knew what was
happening; but as things are I am worried out of my wits. If we
charge in, and they catch us, I have not a single doubt but that we
should never be allowed to come up out of this hollow alive. We know
too much, and they would kill us for a certainty. In fact, they
would probably welcome the chance on a night like this to perform a
little human sacrifice in front of that ghastly thing on the stones
there.'
'Surely they wouldn't go in for murder even if they do practise
this filthy parody of religion?' whispered Rex incredulously.
De Richleau shook his head. 'The Bloody Sacrifice is the oldest
magical rite in the world. The slaying of Osiris and Adonis, the
mutilation of Attis and the cults of Mexico and Peru, were all
connected with it. Even in the Old Testament you read that the
sacrifice which was most acceptable to God the Father was one of
blood, and St. Paul tells us that "Without the shedding of blood
there is no remission".'
'That was just ancient heathen cruelty.'
'Not altogether. The blood is the Life. When it is shed,
energy-animal or human as the case may be-is released into the
atmosphere. If it is shed within a specially prepared circle, that
energy can be caught and stored or redirected in precisely the same
way as electric energy is caught and utilised by our modern
scientists.'
'But they wouldn't dare to sacrifice a human being?'
'It all depends upon the form of evil they wish to bring upon the
world. If it is war they will seek to propitiate Mars with a virgin
ram; if they desire the spread of unbridled lust-a goat, and so on.
But the human sacrifice is more potent for all purposes than any
other, and these wretched people are hardly human at the moment.
Their brains are diseased and their mentality is that of the hags
and warlocks of the Dark Ages.'
'Oh, Hell!' Rex groaned, 'we've simply got to get Simon out of
this some way.'
The Goat turned round again after receiving the last kiss,
holding between its hoofs a wooden cross about four feet in length.
With a sudden violent motion it dashed the crucifix against the
stone, breaking it into two pieces. Then the cat-headed man, who
seemed to be acting the part of Chief Priest, picked them up. He
threw the broken end of the shaft towards a waiting group, who
pounced upon it and smashed it into matchwood with silent ferocity,
while he planted the crucifix end upside down in the ground before
the Goat. This apparently concluded the first portion of the
ceremony.
The Satanists now hurried over to the tables where the banquet
was spread out. No knives, forks, spoons or glasses were in
evidence. But this strange party, governed apparently by a desire to
throw themselves back into a state of bestiality, grabbed handfuls
of food out of the silver dishes and, seizing the bottles, tilted
them to drink from the necks, gurgling and spitting as they did so
and spilling the wine down their dominoes. Not one of them spoke a
word, and the whole macabre scene was carried out in a terrible
unnatural silence, as though it were a picture by Goya come to life.
'Let's, creep down nearer,' whispered the Duke. 'While they are
gorging themselves an opportunity may come for us to get hold of
Simon. If he moves a few paces away from them for a moment, don't
try to argue with him, but knock him out.'
At a stealthy crawl, the two friends moved down the hillside to
within twenty yards of the little lake, at the side of which the
tables were set. The throne still occupied by the monstrous goat was
only a further fifteen yards away from them, and by the light of the
twelve black candles burning with an unnaturally steady flame even
in that protected hollow among the hills, they could see the
clustered figures sufficiently well to recognise those whom they
knew among them despite their masks and dominoes.
Simon, like the rest, was gnawing at a chunk of food as though he
had suddenly turned into an animal, and, as they watched, he
snatched a bottle of wine from a masked woman standing nearby,
spilling a good portion of its contents over her and himself; then
he gulped down the rest.
For a few moments Rex felt again that he must be suffering from a
nightmare. It seemed utterly beyond understanding that any cultured
man like Simon, or other civilised people such as these must
normally be, could behave with such appalling bestiality. But it was
no nightmare. In that strange, horrid silence, the Satanists
continued for more than half an hour to fight and tumble like a pack
of wolfish dogs until the tables had been overthrown and the ground
about the lakeside was filthy with the remaining scraps of food,
gnawed bones and empty bottles.
At last Simon, apparently three parts drunk, lurched away from
the crash and flung himself down on the grass a little apart from
the rest, burying his head between his hands.
'Now!' whispered the Duke. 'We've got to get him.'
With Rex beside him, he half rose to his feet, but a tall figure
had broken from the mass and reached Simon before they could move.
It was the man with the mutilated ear, and in another second a group
of two women and. three more men had followed him. De Richleau
gritted his teeth to suppress an oath and placed a restraining hand
on Rex's shoulder.
'It's no good,' he muttered savagely. 'We must wait a bit.
Another chance may come.' And they sank down again into the shadows.
The group about the tables was now reeling drunk, and the whole
party in a body surged back towards the Goat upon its throne. Rex
and De Richleau had been watching Simon so intently they had failed
to notice until then that Mocata and the half dozen other masters of
the Left Hand Path had erected a special table before the Goat, and
were feeding from it. Yet they appeared strangely sober compared
with the majority of the crowd who had fed beside the lake.
'So the Devil feeds, too,' Rex murmured.
'Yes,' agreed the Duke, 'or at least the heads of his priesthood,
and a gruesome meal it is if I know anything about it. A little
cannibalism, my friend. It may be a stillborn baby or perhaps some
unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered, but I would
stake anything that it is human flesh they are eating.'
As he spoke, a big cauldron was brought forward and placed before
the throne. Then Mocata and the others with him each took a portion
of the food which they had been eating from the table and cast it
into the great iron pot. One of them threw in a round ball which met
the iron with a dull thud.
Rex shuddered as he realised that the Duke was right. The round
object was a human skull.
'They're going to boil up the remains with various other things,'
murmured the Duke, 'and then each of them will be given a little
flask of that awful brew at the conclusion of the ceremony, together
with a pile of ashes from the wood fire they are lighting under the
cauldron now. They will be able to use them for their infamous
purposes throughout the year until the next Great Sabbat takes
place.'
'Oh, Hell!' Rex protested. 'I can't believe that they can work
any harm with that human mess, however horrid it may be. It's just
not reasonable.'
'Yet you believe that the Blessed Sacrament has power for good,'
De Richleau whispered. 'This is the antithesis of the Body of Our
Lord, and I assure you, Rex, that, while countless wonderful
miracles have been performed by the aid of the Host, terrible things
can be accomplished by this blasphemous decoction.'
Rex had no deep religious feeling, but he was shocked and
horrified to the depths of his being by this frightful parody of the
things he had been taught to hold sacred in his childhood.
'Dear God,' muttered the Duke, 'they are about to commit the most
appalling sacrilege. Don't look, Rex-don't look.' He buried his face
in his hands and began to pray, but Rex continued to watch despite
himself, his gaze held by some terrible fascination.
A great silver chalice was being passed from hand to hand, and
very soon he realised the purpose to which it was being put, but
could not guess the intention until it was handed back to the cat-
headed man. One of the other officiating priests at the infamy
produced some round white discs which Rex recognised at once as
Communion Wafers-evidently stolen from some church.
In numbed horror he watched the Devil's acolytes break these into
pieces and throw them into the brimming chalice, then stir the
mixture with the broken crucifix and hand the resulting compound to
the Goat, who, clasping it between its great cloven hoofs, suddenly
tipped it up so that the whole contents was spilled upon the ground.
Suddenly, at last, the horrid silence was rent, for the whole mob
surged forward shouting and screaming as though they had gone
insane, to dance and stamp the fragments of the Holy Wafers into the
sodden earth.
'Phew!' Rex choked out, wiping the perspiration from his
forehead. 'This is a ghastly business. I can't stand much more of
it. They're mad, stark crazy, every mother's son of them.'
'Yes, temporarily.'The Duke looked up again.'Some of them are
probably epileptics, and nearly all must be abnormal. This revolting
spectacle represents a release of all their pent-up emotions and
suppressed complexes, engendered by brooding over imagined
injustice, lust for power, bitter hatred of rivals in love or some
other type of success and good fortune. That is the only explanation
for this terrible exhibition of human depravity which we are
witnessing.'
'Thank God, Tanith's not here. She couldn't have stood it. She'd
have gone mad, I know, or tried to run away. And then they'd
probably have murdered her. But what are we going to do about
Simon?'
De Richleau groaned. 'God only knows. If I thought there were the
least hope, we'd charge into this rabble and try to drag him out of
it, but the second they saw us they would tear us limb from limb.'
The fire under the cauldron was burning brightly, and as the
crowd moved apart Rex saw that a dozen women had now stripped
themselves of their dominoes and stood stark naked in the candle-
light. They formed a circle round the cauldron, and holding hands,
with their backs turned to the inside of the ring, began a wild
dance around it anti-clockwise towards the Devil's left.
In a few moments the whole company had stripped off their
dominoes and joined in the dance, tumbling and clawing at one
another before the throne, with the exception of half a dozen who
sat a little on one side, each with a musical instrument, forming a
small band. But the music which they made was like no other that Rex
had ever heard before, and he prayed that he might never hear the
like again. Instead of melody, it was a harsh, discordant jumble of
notes and broken chords which beat into the head with a horrible
nerve-racking intensity and set the teeth continually on edge.
To this agonising cacophony of sound the dancers, still masked,
quite naked and utterly silent but for the swift movement of their
feet, continued their wild, untimed gyrations, so that rather than
the changing pattern of an ordered ballet the scene was one of a
trampling mass of bestial animal figures.
Drunk with an inverted spiritual exaltation and excess of
alcohol-wild-eyed and apparently hardly conscious of each other-the
hair of the women streaming disordered as they pranced, and the
panting breath of the men coming in laboured gasps-they rolled and
lurched, spun and gyrated, toppled, fell, picked themselves up
again, and leaped with renewed frenzy in one revolting carnival of
mad disorder. Then, with a final wailing screech from the violin,
the band ceased and the whole party flung themselves panting and
exhausted upon the ground, while the huge Goat rattled and clacked
its monstrous cloven hoofs together and gave a weird laughing neigh
in a mockery of applause.
De Richleau sat up quickly. 'God help us, Rex, but we've got to
do something now. When these swine have recovered their wind the
next act of this horror will be the baptism of the Neophytes and
after that the foulest orgy, with every perversion which the human
mind is capable of conceiving. We daren't wait any longer. Once
Simon is baptised, we shall have lost our last chance ot saving him
from permanent and literal Hell in this life and the next.'
'I suppose it's just possible we'll pull it off now they've
worked themselves into this state?' Rex hazarded doubtfully.
'Yes, they're looking pretty done at the moment,' the Duke
agreed, striving to bolster up his waning courage for the desperate
attempt.
'Shall we-shall we chance it?' Rex hesitated. He too was filled
with a horrible fear as to the fate which might overtake them once
they left the friendly shadows to dash into that ring of evil blue
light. In an effort to steady his frayed nerves, he gave a travesty
of a laugh, and added: 'The odds aren't quite so heavy against us
now they've lost their trousers. No one fights his best like that.'
'It's not the pack that I'm so frightened of, but that ghastly
thing sitting on the rocks.' De Richleau's voice was hoarse and
desperate. 'The protections I have utilised may not prove strong
enough to save us from the evil which is radiating from it.'
'If we have faith,' gasped Rex, 'won't that be enough?'
De Richleau shivered. The numbing cold which lapped up out of the
hollow in icy waves seemed to sap all his strength and courage.
'It would,' he muttered. 'It would if we were both in a state of
grace.'
At that pronouncement Rex's heart sank. He had no terrible secret
crime with which to charge himself, but although circumstances had
appeared to justify it at the time, both he and the Duke had taken
human life, and who, faced with the actual doorway of the other
world, can say that they are utterly without sin?
Desperately now he fought to regain his normal courage. In the
dell the Satanists had recovered their wind and were forming in the
great semi-circle again about the throne. The chance to rescue Simon
was passing with the fleeting seconds, while his friends stood
crouched and tongue-tied, their minds bemused by the reek of the
noxious incense which floated up from the hollow, their bodies
chained by an awful, overwhelming fear.
Three figures now moved out into the open space before the Goat.
Upon the left the beast-like, cat-headed high priest of Evil; upon
the right Mocata, his gruesome bat's wings fluttering a little from
his hunched-up shoulders; between them, naked, trembling, almost
apparently in a state of collapse, they supported Simon.
'It's now or never!' Rex choked out.
'No-I can't do it,' moaned the Duke, burying his face in his
hands and sinking to the ground. 'I'm afraid, Rex. God forgive me,
I'm afraid.'
17
Evil Triumphant
As the blue Rolls, number OA 1217, came to rest with a sickening
thud against the back of the big barn outside Easter-ton Village,
Tanith was flung forward against the windscreen. Fortunately the
Duke's cars were equipped with splinter-proof glass and so the
windows remained intact, but for the moment she was half-stunned by
the blow on her head and painfully 'winded' by the wheel, which
caught her in the stomach.
For a few sickening seconds she remained dazed and gasping for
breath. Then she realised that she had escaped serious injury, and
that the police would be on her at any moment. Her head whirling,
her breath stabbing painfully, she threw open the door of the Rolls
and staggered out on to the grass.
In a last desperate effort to evade capture, she lurched at an
unsteady run across the coarse tussocks and just as the torches of
the police appeared over the same hillock, which had slowed down the
wild career of the car, she flung herself down in a ditch, sheltered
by a low hedge, some thirty yards from the scene of the accident.
She paused there only long enough to regain her breath, and then
began to crawl away along the runnel until it ended on the open
plain. Taking a stealthy look over the hedge, she saw her pursuers
were still busy examining the car, so she took a chance and ran for
it, trusting in the darkness of the night to hide her from them.
After she had covered a mile she flopped exhausted to the ground,
drawing short gulping breaths into her straining lungs -her heart
thudding like a hammer. When she had recovered a little, she looked
back to find that the village and the searching officers were now
hidden from her by a sloping crest of down-land. It seemed that she
had escaped-at least for the time being-and she began to wonder what
she had better do.
From what she remembered of the map, the house at Chil-bury where
the Satanists were gathering preparatory to holding the Great Sabbat
was at least a dozen miles away. It would be impossible for her to
cover that distance on foot even if she were certain of the
direction in which it lay, and the fact that she was wanted by the
police debarred her from trying to seek a lift in a passing car if
she were able to find the main road again. In spite of her desperate
attempt to reach the rendezvous in the stolen Rolls, and the frantic
excitement of her escape from the police, she found to her surprise
that a sudden reaction had set in, and she no longer felt that
terrible driving urge to be present at the Sabbat.
Her anger against Rex had subsided. She had tricked him over the
car, and he had retaliated by putting the police on her track. She
realised now that he could only have done it on account of his
overwhelming anxiety to prevent her from joining Mocata, and smiled
to herself in the darkness as she thought again of his anxious,
worried face as he had tried so hard that afternoon on the river to
dissuade her from what she had only considered, till then, to be a
logical step in her progress towards gaining supernatural powers.
She began to wonder seriously for the first time if he was not
right, and that during these last months which she had spent with
Madame D'Urfe her brain had become clouded almost to the point of
mania by this obsession to the exclusion of all natural and
reasonable thoughts. She recalled those queer companions who were
travelling the same path as herself, most of them far further
advanced upon it, of whom she had seen so much hi recent times. The
man with the hare-lip, the one-armed Eurasian, the Albino and the
Babu. They were not normal any one of them and, while living
outwardly the ordinary life of monied people, dwelt secretly in a
strange sinister world of their own, flattering themselves and each
other upon their superiority to normal men and women on account of
the strange powers that they possessed, yet egotistical and hard-
hearted to the last degree.
This day spent with the buoyant, virile Rex among the fresh green
of the countryside and the shimmering sunlight of the river's bank,
had altered Tanith's view of them entirely; and now, in a great
revulsion of feeling, she could only wonder that her longing for
power and forgetfulness of her foreordained death had blinded her to
their cruel way of life for so long.
She stood up and, smoothing down her crumpled green linen frock,
did her best to tidy herself. But she had lost her bag in the car
smash, so not only was she moneyless but had no comb with which to
do her hair. However, feeling that now Rex had succeeded in
preventing her reaching the meeting-place he would be certain to
call off the police, she set out at a brisk pace away from Easterton
towards where she believed the main Salisbury-Devizes road to lie;
hoping to find a temporary shelter for the night and then make her
way back to London in the morning.
Before she had gone two hundred yards, her way was blocked by a
tail, barbed-wire fence shutting in some military enclosure, so she
turned left along it. Two hundred yards farther on the fence ended,
but she was again brought up by another fence and above it the steep
embankment of a railway line. She hesitated then, not wishing to
turn back in the direction of Easter-ton, and was wondering what it
would be best to do, when a dark, hunched figure seemed to form out
of the shadows beside her. She started back, but recovered herself
at once on realising that it was only a bent old woman.
'You've lost your way, dearie?' croaked the old crone.
'Yes,' Tanith admitted. 'Can you show me how I get on to the
Devizes road?'
'Come with me, my pretty.. I am going that way myself,' said the
old woman in a husky voice, which seemed to Tanith in some strange
way vaguely familiar.
'Thank you.' She turned and walked along the bridle-path that
followed the embankment to the west, searching her mind as to where
she could have heard that husky voice before.
'Give me your hand, dearie. The way is rough for my old feet,'
croaked the ancient crone; and Tanith willingly offered her arm.
Then, as the old woman rested a claw upon it, a sudden memory of
long ago flooded her mind.
It was of the days when, as a little girl living in the foothills
of the Carpathians, she had made a friend of an old gypsy-woman who
used to come to the village for the fair and local Saints' Days,
with her band of Ziganes. It was from her that Tanith had first
learned her strange powers of clairvoyance and second sight. Many a
time she had scrambled down from the rocky mount upon which her home
was set to the gypsy encampment outside the village to gaze with
marvelling eyes at old Mizka who knew so many wonderful things, and
could tell of the past and of the future by gazing into a glass of
water or consulting her grimy pack of Tarot cards.
Tanith could still see those pasteboards which had such
fascinating pictures upon them. The twenty-two cards of the Major
Arcana, said by some to be copies of the original Book of Thoth,
which contained all wisdom and was given to mankind by the ancient
ibis-headed Egyptian god. For thousands of years such packs had been
treasured and reproduced from one end of the world to the other and
were treasured still, from the boudoirs of modern Paris to the tea-
houses of Shanghai, wherever people came secretly in the quiet hours
to learn, from those who could read them, the secrets of the future.
As she walked on half unconscious of her strange companion,
Tanith recalled them in their right and fateful order. The Juggler
with his table-meaning mental rectitude; the High Priestess like a
female Pope-wisdom; the Empress-night and darkness; the
Emperor-support and protection; the Pope-reunion and society; the
Lovers-marriage; iheChariot-triumph and despotism; Justice, a winged
figure with sword and scales-the law, the Hermit with his lantern-a
pointer towards good; the Wheel of Fortune carrying a cat and a
demon round with it-success and wealth; Strength, a woman wrenching
open the jaws of a lion-power and sovereignty; the Hanged Man lashed
by his right ankle tp a beam and dangling upside down while holding
two money bags-warning to be prudent; Death with his scythe-ruin and
destruction; Temperance, a woman pouring liquid from one vase to
another-moderation; the Devil, batwinged, goatfaced, with a human
head protruding from his belly-force and blindness; the Lightning-
struck Tower with people falling from it-want, poverty and
imprisonment; the Star-disinterestedness; the Moon~speech and
lunacy; the Sun-light and science; the Judgement-typifying will; the
World, a naked woman with goat and ram below-travel and possessions;
then last but not least the card that has no number, the Fool,
foretelling dementia, rapture and extravagance.
Old Mizka had been a willing teacher, and Tanith, the child, an
eager pupil, for she had spent a lonely girlhood in that castle on
the hill separated by miles of jagged valleys difficult to traverse
from other children of her own postion, and debarred by custom from
adopting the children of the villagers as her playmates. Long before
her time she had learned all the secrets of life from the old gipsy,
who talked for hours in her husky voice of lovers and marriage and
lovers again, and potions to bring sleep to suspicious husbands and
philtres which could warm the heart of the coldest man towards a
woman who desired his caresses.
'Mizka," Tanith whispered suddenly. 'It is you-isn't it?'
'Yes, dearie. Yes-old Mizka has come a long way tonight to set
her pretty one upon the road.'
'But how did you ever come to England?'
'No matter, dearie. Don't trouble your golden head about that,
Old Mizka started you upon the road, and she has been sent to guide
your feet tonight.'
Tanith hung back for a second in sudden alarm, but the claw upon
her arm urged her forward again with gentle strength as she
protested.
'But I don't want to go! Not... not to the .,.'
The old crone chuckled. 'What foolishness is this? It is the road
that you have taken all your life, ever since Mizka told you of it
as a little girl. Tonight is the night that old Mizka has seen for
so many years in her dreams-the night when you shall know all
things, and be granted powers which come to few. How fortunate you
are to have this opportunity when you are yet so young.'
At the old woman's silken words, a new feeling crept into