The Satanist
Dennis Wheatley
(version 1.1)
Copyright © Dennis Wheatley 1960
To the memory of
that most illustrious story-teller,
ALEXANDRE DUMAS PÉRE
Whose books gave me enormous pleasure when I was a boy.
Whose heroes, while subject to normal human frailties, set a splendid example to the young of courage, loyalty and endurance - for which reason I have modelled the heroes of my own books on them.
And whose very slender short story, 'The Corsican Brothers', while having no resemblance whatever in period, subject, background or plot to The Satanist, gave me the idea of using identical twins as two of my principal characters in it.
Foreword
Dennis Wheatley discovered he was a story-teller at school - he told me of the joy of realising that he could capture and hold the attention of the others in his dormitory, and I can well understand it. He later became, briefly, a naval cadet; for some four years a soldier in the 1914-18 War, and then a wine merchant. This he might well have remained for the rest of his life since, after a few years, his father died and he inherited a modestly successful West-End shop which dealt in his favourite commodity and left him with sufficient leisure to enjoy his favourite occupation, which was reading. However, when approaching middle age he returned to story-telling and continued telling stories until his death more than forty years later. I would like some of the millions who delighted from his change of course to know something of how it came about and of their debt to me for the part I played, discreditable though I fear it was.
The truth, I suppose, is that nothing would really have prevented Wheatley from exercising his immense talent for story-telling, even if the business he inherited had been the kind where the aristocracy of Mayfair would look in for a glass of wine and advice on the current vintages from the Managing Director. Unfortunately, though, No. 26 South Audley Street was more a beer and mineral water shop which stocked a little mediocre wine and depended for its trade on currying the favour of seedy butlers and housekeepers, who were more concerned with the commission they received than the quality of the wine.
Wheatley has himself told the story of how he set about changing all that.[1] Soon after his father's death he installed a mahogany-panelled office for himself and a stock of two hundred different liqueurs and a wine list with nothing on it less than thirty years old (and some going back to the eighteenth century). He expanded into the cigar trade and the wholesale trade, supplying restaurants and night-clubs (notoriously bad payers), and characteristically added penurious friends to his so-called staff, for he was the most generous of men. Already aware that the finest stock in London will not sell if nobody knows of its existence, he entertained lavishly - and the more he sold, the more he was owed and the more he owed. His friends, of whom I was one, did nothing to discourage him; on the contrary, we made full use of our membership of 'the club that never closes' and 26 South Audley Street became the most congenial of meeting places. In Wheatley's own words, 'a good time was had by all'.
It was the Depression, he believed, that brought about the inevitable crash but his competitors, whose friends were more prudent, managed to survive it. One thing we could do was to shield Wheatley from its more painful effects and it was not long before he realised that the wine trade had taught him all he needed to know of business life and he returned to story-telling. Within two years he was on the way to becoming a best-seller. Within four years a chance remark of mine over the divine Wheatley hock at his home in St. John's Wood (there had been plenty of salvage from No. 26) was taken up and the 'Crime Dossiers' were born. After the third one had been published, 'DENNIS WHEATLEY PRESENTS . . .' in one-and-a-half-inch lettering had been on every bookstall in the country for three years and he really was a best-seller. Forty or fifty books later he was selling a million copies a year.
How was it done? Modern jargon would call it 'good marketing of a good product'. Not the Dossiers, which sold on their novelty alone (Wheatley never wanted to be a crime writer and never wrote another detective story). But everything else he wrote showed the gusto and energy that marked his whole life and which, once a book was completed, he devoted to ensuring that it was sold. Wheatley's son, Anthony, in his foreword to the first new Century edition of The Forbidden Territory has emphasised his father's insistence on an authentic background. It is true that before writing Wheatley studied the period and country of his characters, and while writing lived with them in both; once done, he was able to forget it all and return to the present until it was time to move a century forward or backward, and rejoin a group of familiar characters he had left to themselves for years.
Nevertheless he was a doer first, a reader and writer afterwards. Between books he liked to go off to distant countries, meeting new people. When the second War came he managed to get himself into uniform and to land the plum of all jobs for the middle-aged, a Royal Air Force representative on the Deception Planning Committee. (He wrote of his envy at seeing me in uniform, but I was seven years his junior and so, unlike him, had missed the 1914-18 War completely.) Years later I suggested to him that I should propose him for membership of the Savile Club where he would meet his fellow authors in an atmosphere conducive to good conversation and reflection. He took the suggestion coolly and spoke of other plans. Eventually he announced that he had become a member of White's - the club that all the favourite characters of his books would have joined. Like most newly-elected members of a club his first object was to get to the candidates' book when no one was looking and see his own page. He had had thirty-five supporters: not bad for the Streatham-born son of a shopkeeper he could not help boasting.
Few writers can carry conviction with their tongue in their cheek and Wheatley believed in what he was writing while he was writing it. Moreover he himself had many of the Victorian virtues of some of his characters - he had, after all, been born under Queen Victoria, when patriotism and loyalty were more highly regarded than sophistication and cynicism. 'I believe you are rather right-wing, Mr Wheatley,' was Robert Robinson's opening when interviewing him for television; there was a clear hint that he had a Bulldog Drummond incarnate before him, if not an out-and-out fascist. Wheatley was taken aback. He had written about men and women of almost every race, income, creed and period. 'Well, I suppose I'm not left-wing,' was all he could find to answer, but he was irritated and puzzled. You didn't have to be a fascist to know the difference between Good and Evil.
That difference was the theme of most of his books, however kaleidoscopic the details. If the reader of The Satanist has ever read a Dennis Wheatley he will know, from the moment Barney Sullivan says, 'I'll play, Sir', that he is in for a good, if bumpy, ride. Will the forces of Evil triumph or be overcome? Ah, but I must not divulge the plot.
J.G. Links, life-long friend of the author, 1988
1. A dangerous assignment
Colonel Verney's office was on the top floor of a tall building in London. He was sitting at his desk looking at a photograph of the naked body of a man of about thirty. Dark marks on the wrists and ankles showed where they had been tightly bound; the head lolled back and the neck was half severed by a horrible gash from ear to ear. Laying the photograph down, the Colonel said:
'The Devil's behind this. I'm convinced of it.'
'Several devils, if you ask me, Sir,' replied Inspector Thompson, who was sitting opposite him. 'Must have been, to have trussed poor Morden up like that before cutting his throat.'
'I didn't say "a devil" but "the Devil" - Lucifer, Satan, or whatever you care to call the indestructible power of Evil that has sought to destroy mankind ever since the Creation.'
The Inspector had been transferred to the Special Branch
only a few months before; so he did not know much about the work of Colonel Verney's department. Like the other branches of the Secret Service, its function was to secure information; it never took legal proceedings. Whenever these were required the case was passed to Special Branch for action. Morden had been one of Colonel Verney's young men, and Thompson had come over from Scotland Yard to report on the case. The report was negative as, although it was over a week since Morden's body had been found in an alley leading down to a Bermondsey dock, the police had so far failed to secure a clue of any kind to the murder. But Thompson had also brought with him the results of a second post-mortem held to answer certain specific questions raised by the Colonel.
Now, he gave a slightly uneasy cough, and said: 'I should have thought it a pretty plain case, Sir. Morden was after these Communist saboteurs, they rumbled him and knocked him off. I can't see how the Devil comes into that. Not from the practical point of view, anyhow. But, of course, if you've got any special theory we'd be only too happy to follow it up.'
The Colonel shook his head. 'No, I've nothing you could work on, Thompson. I'm about to brief another man to carry on in Morden's place. He might pick up something, and naturally your people will continue to check up on all the roughnecks who might have been involved. We can only hope that one of us will tumble on a lead. Thank you for coming over.'
As the Inspector stood up, the Colonel rose too. He was a rather thin man and tall above the average, but his height was not immediately apparent on account of a slight stoop. His hair was going grey, parted in the centre and brushed firmly back to suppress a tendency to curl at the ends. His face was longish, with a firm mouth and determined chin; but the other features were dominated by a big aggressive nose that had earned him the nickname of Conky Bill - or, as most of his friends called him for short, C.B. His eyebrows were thick and prawn-like. Below them his grey eyes had the quality of seeming to look right through one. He usually spoke very quietly, in an almost confidential tone, and gave the impression that there were very few things out of which he did not derive a certain amount of amusement; but at the moment his thin face was grim.
Having politely seen the Inspector to the door, he paused on the threshold and said to his secretary in the outer office, 'I'll see Mr. Sullivan now.' Then he returned to his desk.
Barney Sullivan was twenty-eight years of age, and, in contrast to his Chief, made the most of his five foot nine inches by carrying himself very upright. He was broad-shouldered, rather round-faced and had a nose that only just escaped being snub. His mouth was wide, his brown eyes merry, and his hair a mass of short, irrepressible dark curls. Those merry eyes, a healthy bronzed skin, and his swift movements, showed him to be a young man endowed with abundant joie de vivre.
As he came in, Verney, now faintly smiling, waved him to the chair the Inspector had vacated, offered his cigarette case, and asked:
'Well, young feller, how's the world treating you?'
With a word of thanks, Barney took one of C.B.'s specials - they were super-long Virginians that he smoked occasionally as an alternative to his beloved thin-stemmed pipe - then he replied.
'Not too badly, Sir. I had a grand run with the Pytchley on my day off last week. We killed three times, Apart from that, only the usual complaint; too much desk work. I'm sick of the sight of card-indexes.'
C.B. shrugged. 'Has to be done. Backbone of our job. But I've got something for you that should mean your being out and about for quite a while. That is, if you care to take it.'
'Orders is orders, Sir.' Barney gave a wide-mouthed grin. 'All that matters is if you think I'm up to it.'
'I do. Otherwise I wouldn't offer it to you. But I've never yet asked a man to gamble his life with his eyes shut. The risk involved in this case is far greater than any of us are expected to take in the normal course of our duties; so I'll not hold it against you if you say you'd prefer to stick to routine work. Before you reply you'd better take a look at that.'
Barney picked up the photograph that C.B. pushed across to him, stared at it a moment and gave a low whistle. 'So that's what happened to poor Teddy Morden! I knew, of course, that he was dead, but understood that he'd died of a heart attack.'
'We don't broadcast such matters,' remarked the Colonel quietly, 'or even let on about them in the office to anyone who is not immediately concerned. Now; how about it?'
'I'll play, Sir.' Barney's reply came after only a second's hesitation. 'I hardly knew Morden, except to pass the time of day with; but he was one of us and I'm game to have a cut at the swine who did that to him.'
'Good show, Sullivan. I had a hunch that in you I'd picked the right man to carry on from where Morden left off. The chance of your running down his murderers is pretty slender, though. The police haven't got a clue. Of course, you might strike a lucky lead but, anyway, that isn't really your job. I showed you that photograph only so that you should know the sort of thing to which you will be exposing yourself by stepping into Morden's shoes.'
C.B. got out his pipe and began to fill it. 'This is top-level stuff. Last December a high-power meeting was held with the P.M. in the chair. Among those present, as well as several Cabinet Ministers, were the leaders of the Opposition and some of the big shots of the T.U.C. They met to discuss a matter which for a long time past has been giving a lot of responsible people headaches; namely, the hold that Communism still has on Labour. As a result of that meeting the Prime Minister sent for me and ordered me to carry out a special investigation.'
As he paused, Barney remarked, 'I was under the impression that the savagery with which the Russians put down the Hungarian revolution had resulted in a major set-back for the Communists all over Western Europe; and that here, especially, owing to the strong line recently taken by the T.U.C. Chiefs, the Reds have been finding the going much more difficult.'
'You were right about the effect of the Budapest massacres, but that was quite a few years ago. The Communists get most of their recruits from among young people who are discontented with their lot, and for many of them the Hungarian purge is now only an episode in history. Anyhow, we have good grounds for believing that support for Communism here is again on the increase. You are right too, of course, that for some time past the T.U.C. has been taking active steps in an attempt to check the influence wielded by Communists in the Unions; but it's an uphill game. Did you happen to see a booklet published last year that was called The British Road to Stalinism?'
'Yes. It was a warning to trade-unionists put out by the Industrial Research and Information Service about the danger of Communist infiltration.'
'That's right. And the I.R.I.S. is no Tory-backed set-up. Its Chief is Jack Tanner, a former chairman of the T.U.C. and president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. The booklet was issued in an attempt to impress on the ordinary workers the importance of attending Branch meetings and using their vote in the election of shop-stewards and Union officials. If anything could have woken up the rank and file of Labour one would have thought a broadside from such a source would do the trick; but it failed to make any noticeable impression.'
Having lit his pipe, the Colonel went on. 'There are eight million trade-unionists and only twenty-five thousand Communists, yet the Communists hold posts out of all proportion to their numbers. The average British working man is as sound as a bell. If only we could get a quarter of them to face up to their responsibilities, we could check the rot in no time. But they won't. And only the comparatively few, who have political ambitions, will stand for election as officials because the work entailed would mean giving up some of their evenings instead of watching T.V., working in their gardens, or going to the pub.'
Barney nodded. 'Yes, apathy's the root of the trouble; but from what one hears, it's not only that. A lot of the elections are rigged.'
'Ah! Now you're talking, young feller. That's one of the things I want you to find out about. As you will have seen from the papers, the T.U.C. have been toying with an investigation into ballot rigging
for a long time past; but they don't seem to be able to get down to brass tacks, and it is a real menace. Once one of these Red gentry succeeds in getting himself into a key post, such as secretary of a branch, he is in a position to do all sorts of fiddles. He can call snap meetings at a time when those who would oppose him are sick or on holiday; he can nominate his pals to act as tellers when votes are counted, and get up to a dozen tricks which result in others of his kidney getting seats on the committee. The process is cumulative and before the ordinary members of the branch wake up to what is happening they find that it is Communist controlled. And once they're in, it's next to impossible to get them out. Anyone who tries is either beaten up or, in some way or other, put on the spot.'
'Like that Union official they accused of raping the typist,' Barney grinned. 'If the girl hadn't proved a decent sort and refused to lie for them, he would have been out on his ear and his private life wrecked into the bargain.'
'That's it. No game is too dirty for them to play, even against one of their own kind if he shows signs of disagreeing with the Party line - and the other name for that is "orders from Moscow".'
The Colonel sat forward and went on in his low conspiratorial voice. 'Now, we can't do much about the general apathy at the moment. But if we could get the low-down on these rigged elections and other crooked dealings it would provide really valuable ammunition for the T.U.C. in the purge they are attempting. Not only could they get the boys we had the goods on sacked from their posts, but full publicity about what has been going on would raise the dander of the honest majority men and make them more conscious of their responsibilities. Greater numbers of them would attend meetings and the odds then would be on honest chaps instead of saboteurs being elected. Get the idea?'
'I certainly do, Sir.'
'Good! Then there's another angle to it. Since the war, Britain has been fighting for her life economically. Industry has done marvels in increasing our exports, and the Government did a wonderful job a while back in saving the pound. But the country has been deliberately robbed of a big part of the benefit it should have derived from these stupendous efforts.'
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