The Satanist mf-2

by Dennis Wheatley

  Before he set about the routine jobs that he had in mind to do that day, he looked in at the office. There he learnt from C.B. that all attempts to trace Lothar had so far failed. The enquiry set on foot by United States Air Force H.Q. had drawn a blank, and Otto's efforts to locate his brother via the astral plane had, so far, produced only a strong impression that he had crossed a sea and was now somewhere on the Continent. Interpol had been asked to help, but with the thousands of aircraft that crisscrossed Europe daily, there was small hope that they would be able to identify the airfield on which a plane, of which they had only a very sketchy description, had come down some twenty-four hours earlier.

  That evening another meeting was due to be held by the Communist-dominated branch, down at Hammersmith, of a Union to which Barney belonged; so just before seven he clocked in at the rather dreary little hall that was used on such occasions. There ensued a long wrangle, carried over from the previous meeting, during which the leaders urged the men to refuse to work overtime until a new claim for higher wages was settled. A few older men stood up to say that it seemed wrong to them to put a break on production before the employers had actually refused to grant the new rates of pay, but they were accused by the Reds of being mouthpieces of the bosses, and shouted down. The go-slow motion was passed and about nine o'clock the meeting broke up. The little fraternity of Communists who had control of the branch made for the pub they frequented, and Barney with them.

  After they had had a few rounds of drinks, the leery little man who had tipped Barney off to lay wagers that Tom Ruddy would not be elected as the new Secretary-General of the C.G.T. drew him aside and asked him if he had made good use of the tip.

  'I stand to win about ten quid,' Barney told him with a grin.

  'You bloody fool!' the little man snorted, and spat in the cuspidor. 'You ought to have made yerself fifty. But you've missed the blinking boat now. That is for taking on any more suckers. News'll be out tomorrow morning. Mr. bloody Ruddy's standing down.'

  'Are you certain?' Barney asked, concealing his dismay under an expression of surprised cheerfulness.

  'Course I am,' came the prompt reply. 'He's thrown his hand in. I can't tell you why. Don't know meself. But I had it straight from the horse's mouth that the Comrades meant to put a fast one over him.'

  At closing time the groups broke up and, as was his custom on such occasions, Barney set out by a circuitous route back to the Tube Station. On his way he thought of Mary again and his resolution of the morning - to make no further attempt to get into touch with her for the next thirty-six hours. Reconsidered, it seemed to him that he was probably cutting off his nose to spite his face and that, as he was so anxious to make it up with her, the more evidence he gave of his eagerness to do so, the more likely she was to relent. In consequence, instead of taking the Underground to Victoria, he got out at Gloucester Road and walked along to the tall old house in which Mary had her little flat.

  On his way there, as it was nearly half past ten, he was expecting to find her in; but she was not. Since it was a Tuesday, it occurred to him that, although she had promised him not to, she might have gone to the weekly meeting at Mrs. Wardeel's. If so, she should soon be back; if not, the odds seemed to be that she had gone to a cinema, in which case also she would soon be home. He decided to wait for her, but feeling that in his 'worker's' clothes he might be taken for a suspicious character if found lurking on her landing by one of the other tenants, he went out into the street and took up a position on the other side of the road.

  There had been many occasions when Barney's work had necessitated his waiting outside a block of flats or offices for hours at a stretch; so the undertaking was not new to him and he thought himself lucky that the night was fine. Now and then he changed his position, taking a short stroll but never going beyond clear sight of the house, for to do so would have been to risk her arriving just at the moment when he had ceased to watch; then he might wait on till dawn, accuse her next day of having stayed out all night, and later find that she could show proof that he was entirely mistaken.

  Eleven o'clock came, half past, and a quarter to twelve, without Mary appearing. By then he had decided that she must have gone out to dinner with a man and the thought annoyed him considerably. Although she had given him to understand that she had no family, the fact that she appeared to have no friends at all had often puzzled him. Even if she had not been living for a long time in London, it seemed strange that any young widow with her attractions should not have acquired at least one man friend. That she had not, thus leaving him a free field, he had come to accept; so, now he believed that someone had entered it against him, he felt a quite unjustified resentment.

  Animated by more than a suspicion of jealousy, he decided to continue his watch, so that when his rival brought Mary home he might have a sight of him. Between midnight and one the volume of passing traffic down London's long main western artery fell steeply, the buses ceased, while private cars and taxis, from having been a steady stream, were reduced to a trickle. By half past one Barney began to think of throwing his hand in. It was an hour since he had run out of cigarettes, and Mary's failure to return suggested that she had not only gone out to dinner or a show, but also gone on to supper somewhere.

  He had been telling himself that if she was out with a man it was probably some middle-aged director or important customer of one of the fashion houses for which she modelled, and that she had accepted an invitation to dine rather than give offence; but, if so, she should have been home by this time. The idea that she was more probably dancing with some young, attractive man now became insistent in his mind, and the memory of her firm young body against his own when they had danced together added fuel to his jealous imaginings.

  Two o'clock came, and with it the conviction that Mary and her new beau must have gone on to a night club, which meant that she might not now be home for another couple of hours. More put out than he had been for a long time, Barney hailed a taxi that was crawling westward and had himself driven to Warwick Square.

  While he undressed, he had a whisky and soda and some biscuits; then, as he got into bed, he tried to put Mary out of his mind. It was no good, but his thoughts did take another direction. Perhaps that evening she had gone out with a chap, yet it seemed strange that she had also been out the night before and out, apparently, on the several occasions when he had tried to ring her up. The explanation might be that she had suddenly decided to take a holiday.

  Yet if that were so, why, before leaving London, had she not let him know? The note he had written on Saturday morning must have reached her by first post on Monday. Surely, even if she was furious with him, she would have let him know it by writing a few angry lines in reply, which he should have received that morning? Could she possibly have met with an accident over the week-end and be in hospital? Or, unlikely as it seemed after the way she had broken down at their last meeting, and sworn to have no more to do with the Satanists, had Ratnadatta, after all, again got hold of her?

  At that disturbing thought Barney switched on the light again and set his alarm-clock for six o'clock, determined now to go really fully into the question first thing in the morning.

  Soon after seven he was back in Cromwell Road. As there were a dozen tenants in the old house, its front door was always left on the latch from first thing in the morning up till eleven at night; so he walked straight in and upstairs. His ring at Mary's door remained unanswered. Hoping that she was still in bed, and perhaps sleeping very soundly after her late night out, he waited for a few minutes then rang again, this time insistently. Taking his finger from the bell he listened but no sound of movement came from within the flat, so he then felt certain that she could not be there. In anticipation of such a possibility, he had brought with him a small implement, the efficient use of which he had been taught when training for his job. With it, in less than a minute he had the door open without damaging the lock. The first thing his eye lit on, face upwards on the mat, was t
he letter he had posted to Mary on Saturday morning. Evidently the caretaker, or somebody, brought up the tenants' mail and pushed it through their letterboxes. Anyhow, the fact that it was still there showed that Mary had not been in her flat during the past two days.

  Closing the door behind him, he took a quick look into each of the four rooms of the flat. The bathroom and tiny kitchen were clean and in good order; the bed had been made up and on the sitting-room table stood a vase holding a dozen long-stemmed roses. In the wastepaper basket he found the four pieces of a card, confirming that they were the roses he had ordered from Constance Spry's for Mary and, from the way in which the card had been ripped across, an indication of her anger on realizing the reason for his sending them to her. Taken together, the roses, the letter on the mat, and the unslept-in bed added up to Mary's having gone out sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening and not returned. With the hope of coming upon some clue to where she had gone, he began a systematic search of the premises. In the circumstances he felt no scruples about doing so and, as his duties made it necessary for him to carry out such searches fairly frequently, he did the job swiftly and thoroughly but with an automatic care which resulted in everything he disturbed being left exactly as he had found it.

  The only room to yield any information of interest was the bedroom. The cupboards and drawers were full of Mary's clothes. On checking through the major items he found everything there in which he had seen her, with the exception of a grey coat and skirt. It could be assumed that she had been wearing those when she went out, so had last left the flat in daytime. Up on a high shelf there were a hat box and a beauty box, and under the bed he came upon three suitcases. Two of them bore the initials M.M. and the third E.T.M. The latter Barney guessed to have belonged to the deceased Monsieur Mauriac and he wondered for a moment what E. stood for in the name of Mary's ex-French-customs-officer husband - Emile, perhaps, or Edouard.

  Anyway, the presence of the clothes and luggage made it clear that Mary had not gone off for a holiday; or even, as was confirmed by the finding of her sponge-bag and washing kit in the bathroom, deliberately for a night. Now really worried about what had become of her, Barney relocked the front door of the flat and hurried down to the basement.

  Down there in the gloomy depths, as Mary had told him, lived a not particularly likeable couple named Coggins. The landlord had put them in charge of the building and, theoretically, they were supposed to perform any reasonable small services that the tenants required but actually they would not lift a finger without being tipped. The man went out to work but could be bribed to carry up heavy luggage on his return. The wife took in parcels, cleaned for some of the tenants and did small commissions in the way of shopping for those whose jobs prevented them from doing their own regularly.

  Barney found Mrs. Coggins sorting out some washing, which had been drying in the backyard on the previous day. Her thick brows lifted at the sight of a stranger, and she enquired: 'What do you want, walking into my scullery like this, young man?'

  With his most disarming smile, he replied, 'I'm a friend of Mrs. Mauriac's and I'm worried about her. She is not in her flat, and I have reason to suppose that she has not been home for the past three nights. Can you give me any idea what has happened to her?' 'Tenants' business is none of my business,' said the blowsy woman, with a suggestion of malicious pleasure. 'And if she'd wanted you to know where she was goin' off to, she would have told you, wouldn't she?�

  Barney had had plenty of experience of dealing with Mrs. Coggins' type. He spoke again, with an edge on his voice. 'Mrs. Mauriac's disappearance may turn out to be a very serious matter. Either you will answer my questions truthfully, promptly and politely, or I shall bring the police in to question you for me.' 'Lor!' exclaimed Mrs. Coggins, immediately both overawed and stimulated by a new interest. 'She hasn't been murdered, has she?'

  'I sincerely trust not. Tell me; when did you see her last?' 'Saturday, around one o'clock. Some flowers came in a big box from a florist, and I took 'em up to 'er. All them stairs. I tell you them stairs'll be the death of me. But she gave me a bob for me trouble, as I knew she would.'

  'And you've no idea what happened to her after that?' 'No. Leastwise, not for certain. But there was the coloured gentleman what came enquiring for her about six o'clock.' 'What's that?' Barney snapped.

  Mrs. Coggins shrugged and, sensing the possibility of getting under Barney's skin, replied with a superior smile. T wouldn't have thought one like her would have taken up with a coloured man; but there's never any telling, is there? Some people say as how they are more manly in a manner of speakin' than white fellers, and a lot of girls prefer their fellers to be that way. Of

  course___'

  'I am not interested in your speculations,' Barney cut her short. 'What was this coloured man like, and did she see him?'

  'Well, he weren't a coloured man in the proper sense. Not a real nigger with curly" hair an all; just coffee. Some sort of Indian I suppose, and very well spoken. It's expected that tenants' visitors shall go up and ring the bells of those they want. But this man rang again and again for me. I went up prepared to give whoever it was a piece of my mind, but he told me he'd rung Mrs. Mauriac's bell again and again and couldn't get no reply, and could I tell him when she would be coming in. Of course I told him I'd no idea; then he asked my permission to wait there in the front hall till she came in. To that I said, "You can please yerself, there's no law against it". Then when I come up about an hour later with a bottle of whisky for the gentleman in the second floor back that we call "the Colonel", the coloured gent was no longer there. So maybe she'd come in and gone straight out again with him.'

  'Thank you.' Barney turned on his heel, ran quickly up the basement stairs and went out into the street. He had no doubt whatever that the 'coloured gentleman' was Ratnadatta; but what could possibly have induced Margot - as he thought of her -to go out with him? Surely just pique at his, Barney's, having let her down could not account for her reversing her decision to have nothing more to do with the Indian? And if, from annoyance and boredom, she had allowed herself to be persuaded, why had she not returned to her flat since? Perhaps he had hypnotized her and was now detaining her against her will in the mansion at Cremorne? In any case, it seemed certain that Ratnadatta having come to Cromwell Road on Saturday evening, it was he who was responsible for her disappearance; and its implications were now extremely alarming.

  Barney's immediate impulse was to go to Cremorne, but a moment's thought was enough to check it. Bulldog Drummond tactics were all very well in fiction, but for him to break in and attempt to tackle on his own the permanent staff that must live in the house could result only in disaster. He must restrain his impatience, make a report, secure a search warrant and have Special Branch raid the place officially. But it had taken him barely half an hour to search Mary's flat, so it was still not yet eight o'clock and C.B. would not be in his office until half past nine.

  Now a prey to acute anxiety, Barney strode along to the Earls Court Road, went into a Lyons and killed time as best he could by having breakfast there. Well before half past nine he arrived at the office and posted himself in the hall ready to waylay C.B.

  Verney arrived punctually, nodded 'good morning' to him and made for the lift. Barney returned his greeting and said hurriedly, 'Can I come up with you, Sir? There is a matter I want to see you about urgently.'

  'Sorry,' C.B. shook his head. 'I think I know what it is, but I can't see you yet. I must go through my mail, and Thompson of Special Branch is coming over at a quarter to ten. When I've seen him I hope we'll know more about it. Go to your room and I'll ring through for you as soon as I am free.'

  Wondering how the Colonel could possibly have got to know of Margot's disappearance. Barney went up to the room which, when he was working in the office, he shared with two other young men. At five past ten Verney's P.A. summoned him, and he went up to the big office on the top floor.

  On his entering the
room the Colonel waved him to a chair, and said: 'This is a perfectly damnable business, and there's nothing we can do about it. Thompson got the truth out of Tom Ruddy last night, but he flatly refuses to prosecute.'

  'Tom Ruddy?' Barney echoed, momentarily taken aback. 'No, Father Christmas!' retorted C.B., with an irritable impatience quite unusual in him. 'Or am I wrong in supposing that you came here this morning to report to me that he has withdrawn his name as a candidate for Secretary-General of the C.G.T. ?' 'Yes; no, I mean,' faltered Barney, suddenly recalled to the duty entailed by his major mission. 'I picked up a pretty definite rumour to that effect in Hammersmith last night, and of course intended to report it.'

  'Very well then. This ties up with your second string; so sit down and I'll tell you about it. I heard that Ruddy had thrown his hand in yesterday afternoon, so I asked Inspector Thompson to go to see him and try to find out why. Of course, it's none of our business officially, but I felt certain there must be something fishy about it, and that if Ruddy could be persuaded to accept police help we might be able to restore the situation. At first he was very reluctant to talk but, after Thompson had given him his word that no action of any kind which might involve him should be taken, he got the story.'

  C.B. stuffed some tobacco down into his pipe, and went on. 'One wouldn't have thought that a man like Ruddy would be a superstitious fool; but he is. Apparently his old mum used to tell fortunes pretty accurately, so he has been a believer in that sort of thing all his life. About a year ago someone introduced him to a crystal-gazer named Emily Purbess, a middle-aged and apparently respectable body. He has consulted Mrs. P. several times in the past six months and she's given him guidance that he says has paid off well on various problems connected with his election campaign. About ten days ago she warned him that there was trouble ahead; someone he relied on was going to double-cross him, and if he didn't watch out that would wreck his chances. But she couldn't tell him who or what to watch out for.