Sweet Danger

by Margery Allingham

  ‘Don’t be obstinate. If anything goes wrong with the plan we shall all be in the soup.’

  Mr Campion took his revolver from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

  ‘If you take this,’ he said, ‘at least you can’t come to any serious harm. Although, be careful.’

  Amanda did not waste any time in argument. She took the gun from his outstretched hand.

  ‘You get back to the wood,’ she said. ‘When I hear the signal I’ll get them out.’

  She rose cautiously to her feet, slipped the gun in her jacket pocket, and turned towards the house. Then, looking back suddenly, she stopped and kissed him unromantically on the nose.

  ‘That’s by way of pourboire, in case we don’t meet again,’ she said lightly, and hurried out on to the garden path, whence she walked boldly into the house, the unnatural light turning her blazing hair into a flame.

  CHAPTER XX

  To Meet Ashtaroth

  WHEN THE DECANTER standing upon the small table in the centre of the room was suddenly shivered the atmosphere in the doctor’s drawing-room, which had been tense enough before, was instantly brought to fever pitch. Aunt Hatt screamed, Guffy sprang to his feet and Hal, over whose head the shot had passed, made for the window.

  But Dr Galley’s reactions were so much more startling than the phenomenon itself that they forgot their own alarm in their surprise at his behaviour. He threw up his hand and with eyes blazing and face transfigured exclaimed loudly: ‘He strikes! He shows his will!’

  He gave no explanation for these cryptic utterances, but, finding that he was the centre of interest, turned and addressed the company in a voice completely unlike his usual diffident murmur. The change in him was extraordinary. He held himself very stiffly and there was a suggestion of new strength about him as though he had become possessed of a new and powerful personality.

  ‘Since he has decided to act without my aid, we will leave it to him,’ he said. ‘You will all keep very still, please.’

  Aunt Hatt would have spoken, but he silenced her with a gesture, and she sat looking at him, frank bewilderment written clearly on her kindly face.

  Guffy coughed. The whole thing struck him as being incomprehensible. Campion’s sudden return had exhausted his powers of surprise, and, besides, the atmosphere of the room, which seemed to be full of acrid smoke not unlike incense, but less pleasant, was beginning to cause him discomfort. He felt dizzy and inexplicably sleepy.

  It was at this moment that a third diversion was caused by the arrival of Amanda, who walked coolly into the room, her right hand resting negligently in her jacket pocket. She smiled at the doctor, who turned towards her eagerly.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said testily. ‘The hour is past its height. It is the hour of Casael – you know that. Stand over there.’

  He pointed to a chair set on the right of the bay window. As Amanda walked towards it she disturbed the folds of the curtain which covered it, and the choking aromatic smoke in the air became more dense.

  ‘Quarter to seven,’ wailed Dr Galley. ‘Quarter to seven and we have not yet begun.’

  He moved the table from the centre of the room and proceeded to roll up the carpet. Since his behaviour had become really eccentric only with the smashing of the decanter, and Aunt Hatt, Guffy, and Mary were all three slow-thinking, conventional people, they sat there looking at him stupidly, too astonished to move.

  He kicked the folded rug across the doorway and they sat looking at the boards which he had revealed. These were oak and blackened with age, and upon their dull surface a curious design had been chalked. This consisted of a nine-foot square with a line drawn parallel to each of two opposite sides, forming rectangular margins. These were occupied by crosses and triangles, whilst in the central area between them a circle had been drawn to touch the parallel lines. A smaller circle lay within, concentric with the first circle, and this contained a square again. In the space between the first and the second circles the name Casael was written three times, and on all four sides of the inner square the name Ashtaroth was printed in large letters.

  The full significance of this display did not dawn on anyone, save Amanda, for some time, but Aunt Hatt rose to her feet.

  ‘The air in here is stifling, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go out into the garden.’

  He wheeled upon her. ‘Sit down,’ he said sharply.

  Aunt Hatt sat down meekly; why she never quite understood, save that curiosity played a large part in her mixed emotions just then.

  Dr Galley leant over the back of the sofa and produced a long black dressing-gown, which he put on. And then, stepping carefully to avoid the chalk lines, he placed himself in the centre of the inner square.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I will explain.’

  Outside the storm had broken and the sigh of the wind, coupled with the sound of rain pouring down upon the leaves, made the scene in the room somehow more fantastic, more convincing, than if the sun had been shining.

  A violent crack of thunder above their heads drowned the old man’s voice for an instant, and even the phlegmatic Guffy was conscious of a thrill. Sometimes things are so utterly inexplicable, so unexpected, that they stun the senses into at least momentary acceptance. After the thunder-clap had died away there was complete silence in the little room as the five sat with smarting eyes and suddenly disturbed breathing, watching the figure in the black gown.

  ‘There are many sciences,’ began Dr Galley, ‘which have been forgotten. There was a time when men willingly gave up their lives in a search for power such as is undreamed of by modern pettifogging students. Forty years ago I made up my mind that I would emulate those men and perhaps beat them at their own game.

  ‘For years,’ he went on passionately, ‘I strove with the aid of the remarkable books left to me in this house to make myself a master of those occult sciences which have been neglected so foolishly in the present day.

  ‘I have studied diligently,’ he continued, turning a glittering eye upon them, ‘and, in countless little ways, I have proved that I was right. I could tell you of remarkable cures worked upon the good people hereabouts with the aid of the powers of the air. Some of the country people know me for what I am and respect me for it, even as their forefathers not so long ago respected the great Dr Dee, Court Magician to Queen Elizabeth.

  ‘But,’ he went on with growing fervour and so much nervous power behind his words that now they could hardly have moved had they wished, ‘although in small things I was successful enough to know that I was right, in the large things I had always been disappointed. I thought at first that my books were at fault, or that I myself by my early training had rendered my being too gross, too materialistic to achieve my ends. But seven nights ago I was successful. He came at last. Ashtaroth himself appeared.

  ‘Wait!’ he continued, throwing out his hands. ‘Wait! You shall hear it all. You shall see to what a triumph my studies have brought me. Seven nights ago in the hour of Methratton I was alone in this room, standing within my circle conjuring him to appear. I had fasted for three days. This room was strewn with coriander, sorcelage, and henbane, and I had done all the other necessaries which it is not right for you to hear. After I had repeated my conjuration he appeared.

  ‘He did not come in his usual guise, but in his own person as a man. When I conjured him he came up to me and I knew that my spells were not strong enough to hold him. So that he would not harm me I became his servant. He stayed in my house and hid himself, and I obeyed him. I failed him in one thing. I thought he had left me, but after’ – he turned to them and his face lighted up until he became positively terrifying, and Amanda gripped the gun in her pocket until the steel bit into her flesh – ‘but after,’ he continued, ‘he was delivered into my hands I became his master. I found him on the heath so stricken that the spirit could not leave the body. I brought him back here and he has been my captive. But I have been afraid. The body is dying, and although I have fed the spirit on thos
e things which my books tell me are his chief food, the smoke of ambergris, frankincense, red storax, mastick, and saffron, he has not yet recovered.’

  He paused to allow this announcement to sink in and then went on, speaking with the same horrifying earnestness as before.

  ‘If the body in which he rests should die, then he must find other habitation. Now perhaps you see why I have brought you here. It is written in my books that Ashtaroth, Prince of the Criminators, that great group of fire spirits, can be placated with the blood of two maidens, and two young men taken on the appointed day in the hour of Casael.

  ‘I had arranged,’ he went on, a flash of cunning creeping into his face, ‘that you should take a little morphia with your wine, so that his task of subduing you might be easier. But, you see, he knew his power and disdained a modern drug.

  ‘Now the time is at hand. Ashtaroth, come forth!’

  He threw up his hand and stood facing the curtained bay window. He was trembling, his eyes were blazing, and there was a thin line of foam between his lips.

  The storm added to the impressive effect. A distant rumble of thunder emphasized the words and a flash of lightning flickered through the room, this time accompanied by a much louder crash.

  ‘Here!’ ejaculated Guffy, suddenly stumbling to his feet. ‘You must stop this tomfoolery, Galley. This is madness, you know.’

  ‘Oh, look! Look!’ Aunt Hatt’s voice was hardly recognizable as it cut through Guffy’s husky outburst. ‘There’s something behind the curtain. It’s moving!’

  It needed only this to produce a state of genuine fear in Dr Galley’s audience. All eyes were turned upon the heavy curtain. The choking fumes were now growing stronger in the room, and even while they stared, the curtains stirred a little and from behind them there issued a strange inarticulate sound, something between a gasp and a groan, but which in the circumstances sounded very much less than human.

  ‘He comes!’ screamed Dr Galley, quivering in an ecstasy of excitement. ‘Ashtaroth, come forth! By the masters of the demons who people the upper air, by Python, by Belial, by Asmodeus and by Merizim, come you out! By the Psoudothei I conjure you. I charge you by the Prestidigitators, by the Furies and by the Ariel powers who mix themselves with thunders and lightnings, corrupting the air, bring pestilence, and other evils, I summon you! O Ashtaroth, come hastily and tarry not. Make your appearance visible to my sight. I bind you in this hour of Casael to whom you be captive that you remain visible here before the circle as long as my pleasure is, and not before my license to depart.’

  As the doctor’s chanting died away the curtains billowed forward and were then dragged open, to reveal in the aperture, surrounded by the choking fumes of burning herbs, a terrifying spectacle. The figure of a man so emaciated that he appeared almost a skeleton, partially draped in a crimson cloth and otherwise entirely nude save for cabalistic designs which appeared to be painted on his skin, stood swaying in the aperture. His face was contorted and his red-rimmed eyes were glazed. It was only by his hair that they recognized him. It grew down to an unmistakable widow’s peak, almost reaching the bridge of his nose.

  The doctor was chanting like a maniac in the centre of his circle, and now his voice rose to a frenzy as he besought the new-comer to take his ancient right and drink his fill of blood prepared for him.

  The others, who had been momentarily stunned by this apparition, now sprang to their feet, and the pitiful thing in the curtains suddenly caught sight of Guffy and a strangled cry escaped him as he tottered forward.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he mumbled through cracked lips, ‘get me out of here! He’s mad – he’s torturing me!’

  The effort of speech seemed to be too much for him, for the next moment he had pitched forward on to the floor, where he lay sprawled out across the ancient circle at the feet of the doctor.

  Guffy swept the man out of the way and dropped down beside the terrible thing on the floor. When he looked up again his face was white with alarm.

  ‘I think he’s dead,’ he said shortly. ‘We must clear out of here. Dr Galley, you’ll have to see the police about this, I’m afraid.’

  His quiet voice, which had yet something of a tremor in it, was almost drowned by a recurrence of the thunder. The storm had returned and the angry roar of the rain upon the windows made a fitting accompaniment to the extraordinary scene in the room.

  Dr Galley seemed oblivious of everything and everyone save his captive devil, Ashtaroth, from whom he had so pathetically expected so much. He stood now, an expression of startled bewilderment on his face, all the more terrible because of his strained pupils and twitching lips.

  ‘If the body is dead,’ he shouted suddenly, ‘I have stepped out of my circle. I am no longer protected. The spirit has entered me. I am possessed by Ashtaroth. I feel his power in my blood. I feel his power in my hand. I am possessed –’

  Guffy leapt upon the maniac just in time. From the folds of his robe the doctor had drawn a long slender-bladed knife. The little man seemed to have developed superhuman strength, and Hal and Amanda went to Guffy’s assistance before at length they got him to the ground.

  Then, just at the moment when the magician who had been Dr Galley had become transformed into a frothing screaming homicidal maniac, and the storm outside was at the height of its fury, a clock somewhere in the house struck seven, and instantly a sound which none of them ever forgot swelled and reverberated through the valley until the whole world seemed to reel before its clamour.

  It was as though a bell of gigantic proportions was tolling a peal to summon mankind. It was impossible to tell where the noise came from. It seemed to be all about them, an angry sea of sound.

  And then, quite suddenly, it stopped, and in the peace which followed they became aware of an answering note, a shrill clear humming. It lasted for perhaps a minute and then the clamour of the great bell rang out again, drowning everything else.

  Amanda, who in her position of superior knowledge had not been quite so shaken by these terrifying developments as the others, kept her head and remembered her part.

  ‘Guffy,’ she whispered, ‘lock Galley in the first room across the hall, and the rest of you beat it back through the wood. We’ve got to. I can’t explain now; there’s hardly any time.’

  The urgency in her tone lent her authority, and since her advice embodied the natural desire of everyone present, they obeyed her. Hal put his arm round Aunt Hatt’s shoulders and seized Mary by the hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll go straight to the boat, Amanda. You follow with Guffy. You’ll see to the shuts, won’t you?’

  She nodded and on a sudden impulse thrust Campion’s gun into his pocket.

  ‘You take this,’ she said. ‘I can leave everything to you, can’t I?’

  He looked at her meaningly and nodded.

  When Dr Galley had been disposed of safely in his own dining-room, Amanda and Guffy paused for a moment in the darkened hall.

  ‘This way,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve got to get back to the mill before the bell stops ringing.’

  The storm had abated a little, but the sky was still dark and a fine rain was falling as they came out into the tangled garden, thankfully leaving the house behind them. The body of Ashtaroth lay where it had fallen, its face hidden against the rudely decorated boards.

  The rain had not cooled the atmosphere and a wave of hot scented air, heavy with moisture, met them as they plunged into the path between the sunflowers. All the time the tremendous clangour of the great bell, which now seemed louder even than before and was interrupted by fierce splitting sounds like rending stone, deafened Guffy’s senses and added to his bewilderment.

  Suddenly it ceased again and once more that high sweet echoing murmur soothed the battered valley.

  Amanda turned to Guffy, her eyes dancing. ‘It works!’ she said triumphantly. ‘It works!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘Oh, of course
– you don’t know. It’s the great bell of St Breed, the convent in the Pyrenees. Campion fixed up with them to broadcast it on a private wavelength. That’s what the wireless stuff was for. Scatty has the loud-speakers in the cedar as high as he could get them, so that they correspond more or less with the real bell in the old tower. Those awful crashes are atmospherics. This storm isn’t very helpful. But it’s the sympathetic vibrations that count. Don’t you remember what it said on the oak? Don’t you see, there’s an answer!’

  She dragged at his arm and forced him to plunge on through the undergrowth. As they crossed the narrow lane to the home wood a car, apparently driven by a madman, roared past and turned to skirt the old Pontisbright estate.

  Amanda’s eyes glinted. ‘The system’ was beginning to work.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Truth in the Well

  AT THE MOMENT when Dr Galley was conjuring Ashtaroth to appear, Mr Campion was crouching in the hollowed-out centre of a bramble bush beneath the cedar tree talking to Lugg. The big man, looking even more unhappy than usual in his ear-phones, was expressing his views with his customary forthrightness.

  ‘We’re askin’ for trouble,’ he said, looking down at some six square feet of accumulator while storm and lightning played round him and his paraphernalia. ‘Askin’ for trouble,’ he repeated. ‘If you want my views on this scheme of yours, it’s perishin’ awful.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said his master frankly. ‘Is Scatty ready?’

  Mr Lugg held up his hand. ‘’Ullo,’ he said. ‘’Ere it comes. With these atmospherics it sounds like a vaudeville turn.’

  He jerked a string which hung down beside the bole of a cedar tree and received an answering tug from Scatty, who was superintending the loud-speakers above.

  ‘Well, ’e’s not bin struck by lightnin’ yet,’ he said. ‘Shall we let ’er rip?’

  Campion nodded and his aide bent over the amplifier.

  ‘’Ere goes,’ he said. ‘Eight times as loud as real. I’m very fond of bells.’