`Well, everyone likes having their fortune told, and I saw no harm in that. When I'd agreed, he took me through to the old part of The Priory and down into the crypt. It had evidently been used as a chapel at some time, but he had turned it into a sort of laboratory. There, he made me sit in front of a mirror. It wasn't made of glass, but of some highly polished metal, and it was pitted round the
edges as though it was very old. He gave me a big brass bowl to hold in my lap and put some cones of incense in it. When he had lit them he said to me as follows
“'Within certain limits all men have free will; therefore their futures are not irrevocably fixed, but depend upon the decisions they take at certain major crossroads in their lives. I am about to give you an idea what your future will be, should you decide to rely upon my guidance and become the servant of Prince Lucifer. Keep your eyes fixed on the mirror and through the smoke you will see pictures form upon it.” Then he began to chant in a sing song voice behind me, and I seemed to become a little drowsy.
`You will remember what it says in the Bible about Satan taking our ... our ... taking J. C. up on to the mountain and showing Him the kingdoms of the Earth. Well, me being just a chauffeur saddled with an unwanted wife and kid, it wasn't far off that. There were quite a number of pictures and afterwards they became a bit confused in my mind. The general impression was of myself, a little older, but not much, dressed in expensive clothes, wining and dining with other rich men, and having necking parties with lovely women in the luxury suites of big hotels. But a few of the scenes I saw remained clear cut. There was one of me walking through a great machine shop where hundreds of people were working, and from the respectful way they all looked up at me as I passed it was clear that I was the boss of the whole outfit. Another confirmed that it was the outside of my plant near Colchester pretty much as it stands to day; and blazoned across its front in letters six feet high were the words “BEDDOWS AGRICULTURAL TRACTORS”. The one that really got me, though, was myself in a check suit, standing in front of a long, low grey car. That car had something that no car in the time of which I am talking had got. Its rake was completely different. It was quite unlike anything that had so far been made and obviously an advance in design. It was something slap out of the future, and I knew that whatever else Copely Syle might have faked up to gull me he couldn't have faked up that.
`When the show was over I told him at once that he had made a convert, and asked what I must do to become the me in the pictures I had seen. He replied, “There is nothing very difficult about it, if you are prepared to forswear the gloomy Christian God and all His works. Prepare yourself for that by reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards every night from now on, and return here at the same hour a week from to day.”
`It wasn't until he was showing me out of the front door, a few minutes later, that I remembered the reason I had come to see him; and with a sudden feeling that somehow he had made a monkey out of me, I said pretty sharply, “We haven't settled anything about that five hundred pounds.”
` “No,” he said, “and if you've any sense we shan't need to. When you come here next week you'd better bring that dead cat with you as a first offering. If you don't I will buy it off you later, as we arranged this morning. But don't imagine that the money will do you any good. By taking it you will decree a very different future for yourself from the one I showed you. The choice is yours.”
`During the week that followed I was torn first one way, then the other. After all, the five hundred smackers was as good as a bird in the hand, and I hated the idea of giving it up; yet I couldn't get the image of that car of the future out of my mind, and as a sort of token payment towards it in advance I wrestled for half an hour each night with the tricky business of getting through the Lord's Prayer backwards. When the week ended I still hadn't made any definite decision; but, all the same, when I called again at The Priory I took the dead cat with me.
`That night Copely Syle took me straight to the crypt, and the first thing he did was to shove the cat into the furnace there. Then he said to me, “Now I propose to call upon Prince Lucifer in order that you may make your bargain with him.”
` “What bargain?” I asked, rather taken aback.
` “Why, the usual one, of course,” he replied a little sharply. “As Lord of this World he will give you every reasonable success, pleasure and gratification in it that you may desire; but for all that he naturally asks something in return. You must sign a pact making yourself over to him body and soul.”
`I didn't much like the idea of doing that, and I said so.
`He laughed then, and gave me a pat on the back. “Don't worry. You must sign it, and in your own blood; but you need never honour it. In your case it will merely be similar to a Life Insurance Policy lodged at a bank as security. You are lucky in having just had a little daughter. All you have to do is to have her baptised into the old faith, and undertake that should she reach the age of twenty one you will produce her here in this crypt on her twenty first birthday. In that way you may redeem your bond and it will be handed back to you.” '
John gave a low exclamation of horror at this frightful revelation, but C. B. who had guessed what was coming from what had gone before grabbed his arm and squeezed it sharply, to check him from bursting into angry words that might have put an abrupt end to Beddows' story; while Beddows, now apparently almost self hypnotized by the recital of his confession, ignored the interruption, and went straight on
`Although I didn't give a damn for the brat, it did not seem right somehow; but what was I to do? By letting him burn the cat I had burnt my own boats. I no longer had anything on him. It had become a choice of my going through with the business and a prospect of getting everything I'd ever wanted, or of walking out of the house worse off than I'd ever been before; because in him I would have made a powerful and unscrupulous enemy, who could have got me the sack and used his influence to chivvy me out of the district.
`Well, I signed the pact, and afterwards he put me through a long ritual that I could not make head nor tail of, except that in symbolical submission to Lucifer he made me kiss his arse; but by that time I felt it was a case of in for a penny, in for a pound; so I made no bones about it. Then he gave me his instructions about the baptism of the child and sent me home.
`By that time I'd tumbled to it that the five hundred didn't mean much to him, and it wasn't either to save it or to get me as a convert that he had gone to quite a lot of trouble. It was the child he was after, and I was still in half a mind to ditch him about that. I think I would have but for the fact that three days after I had signed the pact I learnt that I had won seven hundred and twenty three pounds in a football pool.
`It wasn't a fortune, but it seemed to me a real earnest of Prince Lucifer's good faith. All the same, there was something a bit frightening about getting a sum like that out of the blue so soon after I had abjured the Christian God. It scared me enough to make me decide that I had better not try to wriggle out of taking the baby to be baptised.
`We had fixed on the following Saturday night for that, and I slipped some dope that he had given me into Hettie's evening cup of cocoa. No sooner was she in bed than she was sleeping like a log. I wrapped the child up well and carried her to a field about a mile away from The Grange, where the Canon had told me to meet him. There were a number of other people there, women as well as men, and among them old Mother Durnsford, although I did not know that at the time, as all of them were wearing cloaks and great animal masks that hid their identities. Later, when I was made a regular member of the coven, I got to know them, all; but she would never forgive me for having tried to blackmail Copely Syle, and nothing I could offer would persuade her to sell me this house. But to get back I saw only the beginning of that first Sabbat I attended, as the Canon was very anxious that the child should not take a chill. The actual baptism didn't take long. It was a revolting business; but as soon as it was over he packed me off home with her.
`As you've met El
len, you will probably have noticed that she is different from other girls. She can't go into a church without being sick, and animals won't go near her. At night, too, she seems to assume a different personality. Naturally, she has never understood why she should be affected as she is, because she knows nothing at all of what I've told you; but it is having been baptised into the Satanic faith which causes these instinctive reactions, and the fact that during the hours when the Powers of Darkness are abroad she becomes readily subject to their influences.
`For many years I had no cause to regret what I had done. Once I had taken the plunge, Copely Syle advised me that I'd be a fool to strive for success the hard way, by going to London and spending two years studying engineering; so I used my win from the football pools to buy a share as a working partner in the business of a secondhand agricultural implement dealer in Colchester. It was only a small concern, but from the day I started there it began to flourish. I found myself imbued with enormous energy, so that I could work eighteen hours a day and enjoy it.
`All sorts of ideas came to me, too. I began to design gadgets that made tractors more efficient and took out patents for them. Soon they were bringing me more money than my regular earnings. My senior partners were an old man and his son. When I'd been with them just on two years the son had a car smash one night coming home from a dance, and died as a result of his injuries. His loss caused the old man to lose all interest in the business, and he let me buy him out for a song. That was in '33, and in '34 I started a little plant of my own to make the first Beddows All purposes Garden Motor. It was an instantaneous success. Another invention to do with decarburizing brought me enough capital to expand without taking in a partner. By 1936 I was employing four hundred hands. In '38 I merged all my interests as Beddows Ltd., with a capital of half a million, and in the same year work was begun on the big factory. It was completed just in time for the war. By the end of it I was rolling in money and a director of half a dozen big firms, in addition to being chairman of my own.
`To begin with I saw quite a lot of Copely Syle and often assisted him in his magical rituals. That is how I learned enough to erect this pentacle myself last week but as my own concerns began to occupy me more and more I lost interest in the higher aspects of the Great Art. Then it gradually got down to my simply paying homage to Prince Lucifer once a year, at the great Sabbat on Walpurgis Night. Apart from round about the time of those annual gatherings I never gave a thought to the real source of my money and success.
`That may sound strange, but it isn't really, because my principles were no better and no worse than those of most
of the other big business men with whom I was constantly mixing, and it seemed to me that my achievements, like theirs, were the natural outcome of ability, shrewdness and hard work.
`It wasn't till after last Walpurgis Night that I began to worry a bit. Attending the great Sabbat brought it home to me with something of a shock that I had only just over ten months to go before I was due to hand over Ellen. But even then I didn't think about it much, as a hundred and one urgent business matters drove it into the back of my mind. Then, just before Christmas, Ellen came home for good, and that gave me a real jolt.
`I don't think I've mentioned it, but poor Hettie committed suicide while Ellen was still only a little girl. I've never married again, but I took several women to live with me for various periods, and that was one of the reasons why I sent Ellen away to boarding school at the age of eight. The other was an instinctive feeling that, anyhow until she was grown up, I ought to keep her away from Copely Syle. Of course I could not prevent her from meeting him now and then, but she has never been at home for long enough at a time to fall under his influence. It was for that reason, too,, that when she was too old to stay at boarding schools any longer I sent her to a finishing place in Paris. Her two and a half years there came to an end last December, and her return brought me face to face with the fact that my twenty one years of having everything for nothing were darn' near up.
`Ellen has been at home so little in all this time that I hardly know her; so I'm not going to pretend that I suffered frightful pangs of remorse at having sold her to Lucifer when she was a baby. She has meant practically nothing in my life, and I imagined that all that would happen when she was twenty one was that she would be initiated as a witch. I reckoned that by having kept her away from Copely Syle and seeing to it that she was educated by decent people I was doing the best I could for her in the circumstances. Naturally, I disliked the idea of having to hand her over to the Canon, but that was all I had undertaken to do, and it seemed to me that at the age of twenty one she would be perfectly capable of telling him to go to blazes if she felt that way. If she liked the idea of becoming a witch, that was her look out. If not, they couldn't make her practice witchcraft against her will. Anyhow I'd quieted my conscience with the idea that I could honour my bond, while ensuring that when she had to take her decision she should do so with an unprejudiced mind.
`Had I been right in my belief that there was no more to it than that, I should be taking her to The Priory on the evening of her birthday; but purely by chance I found out that I had been fooling myself. Ever since I've been in business in a fairly big way I've given Copely Syle sound financial tips from time to time, and he has quite a bit invested in my companies. A few months ago I wanted to tip him off to sell out from one of my subsidiaries. Instead of dropping him a line, as I usually did, I called in at The Priory one evening on my way home. After we had had a drink his vanity got the better of his discretion, or perhaps he thought that I know less about magical operations than I do. Anyhow, he took me to his crypt and showed me his homunculi.
`Apparently he has been working on them for years, although I was unaware of that. He has got one there now as near perfect as any magician is ever likely to produce. To enable it to leave its jar and function like a normal human being it needs only one thing the lifeblood of a twenty one year old virgin.
`Naturally he never hinted that to me; but it so happened that I knew it. In a flash I realised what he was planning to do with Ellen. It solved, too, a question that had vaguely puzzled me for a long time. He had never pressed me to give him an opportunity to get to know Ellen, and had most heartily endorsed my policy of keeping her at school until she was grown up. I saw then that he had done so to lessen the risk of her meeting some young man and being seduced, or getting married, before she was twenty one.
`Well, I knew then that I was up against it. Although I had no special love for the girl I couldn't let that happen. After a lot of thought I decided that there was only one thing for it both Ellen and I must go into hiding for a time and remain so till after the fateful day.
`It may sound queer to you, but it is a fact that Prince Lucifer is quite a sportsman. He has always been willing to match cunning with cunning. There are plenty of cases in which people have enjoyed his gifts and managed to cheat him in the end. Ellen was used to doing what she was told without argument; so I decided to get her out of the way. She had a nasty sore throat just after Christmas; so as a first step I fixed it for her to have her tonsils out, and whisked her off to a nursing home at Brighton. Then I made arrangements to get her out of the country and park her in the South of France, under an assumed name.
`On my failure to produce her, my bond made me liable to act as forfeit in her place, and as Copely Syle held my bond it would be up to him to enforce it. I could not hope to escape him by taking a plane to the United States or Australia; because with me he has occult links which would enable him to find me on the astral, wherever I was; so I made up my mind to tell my office that I had gone abroad, then dig myself in here. Only here could I hope for the absolute privacy necessary to protect myself. The trap on the landing and the ape were designed to prevent Copely Syle getting in to me in the flesh and using the cunning that Lucifer has given him to wheedle out of me where I had hidden Ellen. The pentacle, as you evidently know, is my defence against his getting me on the astral.
`He hasn't attempted to do either yet. That may be because he is occupied with other matters. Some while ago, you said that he was after Ellen's blood. As you know that, and why, you probably know what he has been up to this past week. I shut myself in here as soon as I returned from taking Ellen down to the Riviera; so about what has happened since you must be better informed than I am. Anyhow, I can give you no further information.'
Suddenly Beddows' voice changed, rising to an hysterical note, as he added, `If I were a free agent I'd hand the two of you over to the police for having broken in here. As I am not, and you threatened to expose me to the most frightful peril, I've told you everything there is to tell about my awful situation.
Everything, d'you understand? Everything! Now get out! And leave me unencumbered to fight my own battle.'
Silence descended on the room like a curtain of draped black velvet.
Neither C. B. nor John had dared to interrupt Beddows' long monologue. Both of them had been acutely conscious that although he was definitely not possessed, he was, all the same, in a quite abnormal state. From the toneless voice in which he had spoken for most of the time it was clear that he was using them only as a focus at which to pour out his own story; and it was reasonable to suppose that in all the twenty one years since he had made his pact with the Devil he had never told it to anyone before. To have cut in at any point with question, or even comment, might well have checked the flow and deprived them of hearing the all important latter part of the revelations.
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