Give the Devil His Due

by Sulari Gentill

  It struck Rowland that the room was unexpectedly neat, no cobwebs or bloodstains, that sort of thing. Perhaps witches were naturally tidy, he reasoned, countering the tension with idle flippancy—they carried brooms, after all.

  The walls around him were panelled with cedar. It was unusual for the age and style of the building, though the room might well have been refurbished. Rowland paced the perimeter. It was then he noticed the scrap of fabric caught between two panels on the far wall. Pulling out his pocketknife, he slid the blade into the barely discernible join. It met no resistance—there was no wall behind the panelling. He pushed on the opposite side of the panel and it gave, revolving around a pivot to reveal a hidden adjunct to the room. Large enough to accommodate six cubicles each housing telephones. Rowland applied the same principle to other panels along the same wall, discovering behind them blackboards, more telephones and totes. And he realised he was standing in an illicit SP bookmakers’ den. He laughed. It was a quite brilliant disguise. A coven seemed at home in a House of the Macabre. It explained the afterhours comings and goings which most people would be too frightened to investigate. Though he was pretty sure witchcraft was illegal, it was unlikely it would interest the police as much as an illicit bookmaker. The discovery also explained what White might have been doing here.

  Rowland closed up the panels. He was not due to signal again for at least thirteen minutes, but there was no point lingering. It was not until he stepped into the corridor that he realised the lights on the floor below had been turned on, and there were voices and movement on the stairs. There was no time for anything but to retreat into the room from which he had just emerged. He shut the door, pulled the light cord and crouched behind the satanic altar.

  The voices became louder, interspersed with drunken laughter. All Rowland could do was hope they would go directly into the office… but that hope proved in vain.

  The door was pushed open and Rowland heard a number of people enter. He knew then that discovery was inevitable. He braced himself.

  The light was switched on. The first figure to walk around the altar was wearing women’s shoes. Beyond that, she wore full-length black robes and an owl-like facemask complete with beak. The lips beneath the beak twisted in horror and screamed.

  Rowland had no time to ponder the irony of someone dressed as a ghoul being frightened by a man in a three-piece suit. He broke for the door. Intercepted, he was tackled to the ground and then dragged to his feet under restraint.

  Someone wearing a Horus mask pushed the point of a straight dagger against his throat.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” snarled a man whose mask resembled the face of a goat.

  Rowland said nothing.

  “Who sent you?” the goat demanded.

  “No one.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  The owl whispered in the goat’s ear. He nodded. “Well, you are in a great deal of trouble boy. Your soul is in peril.”

  A second voice, from behind a cat mask. “Do you know how we punish interlopers who dare to trespass into our magic circle?” Despite the dagger poised at his throat, Rowland fought the impulse to laugh. Bookmakers invoking magic circles… it was absurd. But he did know his chances were better if they didn’t realise he’d seen behind the panelling. So he didn’t laugh and he tried to look concerned by the threat of black magic.

  “What are you doing here?” the cat asked.

  A right hook to the jaw and Rowland reeled.

  “You better answer darling,” the owl advised.

  Rowland wiped the blood from his lip. He met the cat’s eyes through the holes in its mask. “I want to join.”

  “Join what?”

  “Your coven.”

  “What?”

  Rowland scrambled through his paltry knowledge of the occult. “There only appears to be nine of you,” he said making a quick headcount. “A coven requires thirteen. It seems to me that you need members to complete your… circle.”

  The cat hit him again. “We have all the members we need.”

  Rowland shook his head to settle the ringing in his ears. Clyde would go for the police soon if he hadn’t already. “Oh, I say. Terribly sorry—how embarrassing. I’ll just be on my way then.”

  A third blow, to the stomach this time. “You have a smart mouth. I ask again, for the last time, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Rowland staggered as old bruises were impacted by the punch. Gasping he tried another tack. “A wager. There are rumours about this place with that chap being killed and all.” He paused to cough, to catch his breath and think swiftly. “One of the fellows at my club wagered that I wouldn’t have the courage to spend the night. A gentleman can’t be called a coward, after all…”

  Anonymous eyes behind the masks all stared at him. Fleetingly Rowland wondered if this was what White last saw. They whispered among themselves. Rowland strained to catch any stray word, but he could pick up nothing.

  The figure in the bear mask spoke to him. The voice was male, angry and Rowland had heard it before. “You’re bloody Rowland Sinclair.”

  “Yes.” Rowland’s voice did not betray his growing panic. He struggled to place the voice.

  “What do you want, Sinclair?”

  “What I said at the outset. I have an interest in the occult,” Rowland maintained the lie steadily, his eyes fixed on the slits in the bear mask. He was a poker player—he knew how to bluff and he wanted the bear to speak again. “I met Aleister Crowley when I was in England. We got on rather famously. I had heard a coven operated from here. It’s not as if I could apply for membership through conventional channels, so I thought I’d come along and observe. You are a real coven, aren’t you?”

  Perhaps the bear realised that his voice had been recognised because he didn’t reply.

  Horus raised his arms. “We are servants of Satan! We are the children of Hell!”

  Rowland nodded slowly wondering where the ludicrous pantomime would lead.

  “You should never have come here Sinclair,” said the wolf. “Now we’re going to have to make sure you don’t betray us.”

  “I say we kill him, offer him as a sacrifice,” crooned the owl. “Like we did that reporter.”

  “Shut up!” the bear snarled. “He’s a friend of the mongrel.”

  Rowland stiffened. “You killed White?”

  To the Editor, Sir—

  The great outcry against Sunday sport by some of the ministers of religion seems amazing when no voice is raised against the two greatest evils and enemies of the working man and his family—afterhours drinking and public-house betting. It seems incredible that the Ministerial Association has remained silent and let this huge cancer sap the morals of our young men and girls on the one hand, and steel the money from the workers’ women and children and deprive them of the necessaries of life…

  There is a bookmaker in practically every hotel and club in Broken Hill to get the cash that should go to feed and clothe the children (in lots of cases) of the workers, and non-workers trying to pick winners with the endowment money. The bookmakers flaunt around in their expensive cars, exhibiting their ill-gotten gains, procured at the expense of the women and children…

  The reverend gentlemen have, in my humble opinion, worried about the “fly’” and permitted the human blood-sucking spiders to have a free go.

  Yours, etc.,

  “DECEMBER.”

  Barrier Miner, 1934

  ____________________________________

  The wolf grabbed Rowland by the throat. “The devil requires his tribute.”

  Rowland began to reconsider his assumption that these men, and at least one woman, were playing at the occult.

  The wolf motioned the owl. “Sinclair wants to join the coven. Let’s give him our highest honour.”

  The dagger was held again to Rowland’s throat, his protests silenced with a blow to the ribs. He was confused now. This was all happening too quickly and too inconsisten
tly with what he’d seen behind the panel… but some part of him knew instinctively that it would be more dangerous to reveal what he’d discovered. A rubber mask was thrust over his face and tied tightly at the back. Through the restriction of inadequate eye slits, everything he saw became all the more surreal—altered and threatening. Black and white images of White in death came too easily to mind.

  “Look here…” Rowland tried feebly to negotiate.

  “Speak again and we’ll cut out your tongue,” the cat warned.

  They forced him on to the altar and the wolf cursed him, calling on Satan to accept Rowland Sinclair as an offering from his servants. The razor was raised.

  “No… stop…”

  The wail of sirens seemed to precede the crash below by only seconds. And then the shouts of police. The owl, the bear, the goat and a couple of bird-like creatures opened the windows and climbed out. The wolf pushed Rowland back. “Right, Sinclair, you give the name Alan Smith and it’ll all work out fine. You say nothing, and neither will we.”

  Rowland was disoriented. One moment he was about to be murdered as a ritual sacrifice and the next, the coven was offering to protect his identity and reputation.

  The police found the altar room soon enough, bursting through the door in numbers. The officer in charge of the constables seemed young and, to be honest, mildly terrified. The wolf pulled off his mask to reveal a soft smiling face as he explained that they were members of a secret society carrying out an ancient rite. “We’re not unlike the Freemasons, the Druids or the Oddfellows,” he said affably. “I know it must look a little peculiar, but there’s really nothing to be alarmed about.”

  “They were planning to kill me!” Rowland protested, struggling to remove his mask.

  The coven laughed. “Nonsense!” the unmasked wolf declared. “It’s all part of the ritual, that’s all. The young fella’s just taken it all too seriously.”

  “Who are you?” the constable demanded.

  “Thaddeus Magdalene. I’m the proprietor of this establishment. This young man,” he nodded at Rowland, “is Alan Smith, the newest initiate to our little… club.”

  “The panels in this room are false,” Rowland said, finally yanking loose the mask. “This is a bookmakers’ den.”

  The silence was stunned and momentary. Then the cat lunged for Rowland. “Why you lying bastard!” Free to defend himself this time, Rowland punched the hooded man.

  A scramble and two constables pulled both men apart.

  Delaney appeared at the doorway. “Rowly?” he said staring. “What on earth’s going on here?” He didn’t wait for Rowland to reply, assuming control of the scene. “Take Mr. Sinclair downstairs while I speak with Mr. Magdalene and inspect these premises a little more thoroughly,” Delaney ordered. “I’ll interview Sinclair once we ascertain what exactly is in this room.”

  “They killed White,” Rowland told Delaney quietly as he was escorted past. “They told me.”

  In the first exhibit room Rowland was reunited with his friends. Edna threw her arms around him and embraced him tightly. “Thank goodness you’re all right.”

  “We went to the police as soon as we spotted the flaming menagerie go in. They thought we were drunk,” Clyde said as he shook Rowland’s hand. “Milton made a scene and they telephoned Delaney at home in the end.”

  “Where’s Flynn?” Rowland asked, looking for the actor.

  “He’s gone back to the car to release Beejling. We had to tie the poor man up to prevent him going to the police as soon as you didn’t come out of Magdalene’s.”

  Rowland grimaced. He’d completely forgotten about Beejling.

  “What happened?” Edna asked noting the blood on his lip. “What did they do to you?”

  Rowland filled them in.

  “I’m confused,” Milton said. “Are they bookies or occultists?” “I’m rather confused myself, but I think they’re probably bookmakers pretending to be Satanists to scare people into staying clear.”

  “But they killed White.”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “But why?”

  “Perhaps he discovered they were running a bookmakers’ operation.”

  They waited over an hour before Delaney came down. The coven members who had not escaped via the windows were escorted through in handcuffs first, some still clad in masks. They shouted abuse and threats at Rowland Sinclair as they were led past.

  Delaney shook his head as he lit a cigarette. “More enemies, Rowly?” He sighed. “Come on, I’d best take your statement.”

  They used the upstairs office rather than go back to the station where the coven was being processed. Rowland gave his account of what happened.

  “Once they knew the jig was up, they confessed that the occult business was a ruse to disguise the bookmakers’ shop,” Delaney said. “Apparently they scared the last chap who accidentally discovered them into taking holy orders, so they thought they could do the same with you, or alternatively make you think you’d been initiated into the coven to procure your silence. They claim to use the daggers for opening letters and deny any intention of murdering you.”

  “That’s not the impression I got. What about White?”

  “They say they took credit for that to scare you.”

  “How did they recognise me?”

  “They’ve been taking bets on the race—that Red Cross motor marathon. Your picture’s been in the papers. Magdalene wants you charged with breaking and entering.”

  “I didn’t break and enter. I got locked in.”

  Delaney tapped the side of his nose. “And that’s the story I’m sticking to.”

  “Do they know anything at all about White’s murder?”

  “They say not.”

  “It seems an awful coincidence.”

  “You think White’s death was some kind of ritual sacrifice?” Delaney asked.

  Rowland considered it. “No,” he said in the end. “There was nothing ritualistic about White’s murder—no mask, he was fully dressed and he was in the wrong room, unless the Greek Room has an altar?”

  “It doesn’t,” Delaney confirmed. He consulted his watch. “I don’t suppose you want to have a look at it?”

  Rowland shrugged. “That would be easier than getting myself locked in again I suppose.”

  The Greek Room was much smaller than it appeared in the crime scene photographs but the exhibits were the same: Spartan warriors, the Minotaur, Medusa, an Egyptian pharaoh and Pan. They were as Daisy Forster had described them: nothing particularly spectacular. And of course the pharaoh wasn’t Greek, but that point was probably irrelevant to the fact that Crispin White was murdered here.

  Rowland’s eyes fell once again on the wiring Edna had noticed in the photographs. He knew exactly what they were now: telephone cables. The Greek Room was directly below the altar room where he’d found the illicit bookmakers’ shop. Perhaps White too had realised what the wires were and sniffed out the bookmakers like the newshound he was. There had been a reference to the Kings Cross coven in his notebook.

  Delaney nodded his agreement. “I think it was an astute move to conceal that you knew what they were up to.”

  “Look Colin, I didn’t really get a look at all those jokers. Were any of them…?”

  “Wombat Newgate.”

  Rowland tensed. “So Stuart Jones might be involved with this lot, too?”

  “He wasn’t here, Rowly, but rest assured we will question Newgate vigorously. We’ll find out if this is connected to what happened to Miss Higgins.”

  “Which mask was he wearing?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Which mask was Wombat wearing? Which one was he?”

  “The clown. Why?”

  “The bear’s voice was familiar.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a clown?”

  “No, definitely a bear. I didn’t notice the clown. I might have been a good deal more unnerved if I had.”

  “We didn’t a
pprehend a bear.”

  Rowland swore. “He must have been one of the chaps who jumped out the window.”

  Delaney tapped a cigarette out of its case. “I’ll have the boys keep an eye out for a bear in Kings Cross.”

  Rowland smiled. “Also an owl and a couple of things that looked like parrots.”

  Delaney groaned. “They’ll think I’ve been drinking.” He checked his notebook as he recalled a promise, and found the relevant information. “The Bocquets’ maid is called Frances Webb,” he said. “She lived in so we haven’t got a current address.”

  “Terrific,” Rowland replied, frustrated.

  “I have a number of statements to take tonight so I’d best get back to the station. You go home, Rowly. I’ll be in touch once I’ve sorted this mess out.”

  Rowland offered the detective his hand. “Thank you, Colin.”

  Delaney accepted the handshake. “You won’t leave town, will you, old boy?”

  When Rowland and his friends finally left the waxworks most of the police had already gone. Two constables had been left to guard the premises while the door the police had forced was insecure. They walked across the street to where the cars were parked near a streetlight and it was only then they noticed that three men awaited them.

  Flynn and Beejling had, it seemed, joined forces to restrain a thin, ragged man against the bonnet of the Rolls Royce.

  “What’s going on here?” Rowland demanded.

  Beejling replied, “This gentleman was interfering with your car, sir.”

  “I weren’t!” the man protested.

  “You were crouched next to the wheels!” Flynn barked. “Getting ready to slash the tyres, no doubt. The bloody cheek!”

  “I weren’t!” the man said again.

  “He doesn’t have a knife,” Rowland pointed out.

  “Empty your pockets,” Beejling instructed his prisoner.