To the Devil, a Daughter

by Dennis Wheatley

  Gritting his teeth, C.B. set about screwing his wrists back and forth and jerking up his knees with all his force, so that the tight string cut into his ankles. The pain made him wince, but he kept at it till he had drawn blood at both his wrists, then he allowed himself a breather.

  As he sat, slumped now in the chair, panting heavily, another thought came to him. For a second he hardly dare consider it as a real possibility; then he saw that it was perfectly logical. With the wounds he had inflicted on himself he might yet save his life. When Copely-Syle returned he would show them to him, then dare him to stage his ‘accident’. The Canon was no fool; and even by the aid of magic it was hardly thinkable that in the few minutes, which were all that would be at his disposal, he would be able to cause bleeding wounds to disappear so that they left no trace. He would know that to carry through his plan would now bring him into acute danger. He might be a criminal lunatic, but he was not mad in that way. He would either devise some other plan for killing and disposing of his victim or, if he could, would perform an involved magical ceremony to heal the wounds, before having him taken out and put on the line to be run over by a night goods train. Whichever course he took it meant a postponement of the execution. And even half an hour might now bring John, and after him the police, upon the scene.

  It was at that moment, tense with excitement at this new-found hope, that C.B. suddenly realised that something was happening at the far end of the crypt.

  Screwing round his head he stared towards the furnace, from which a hissing noise emitted. The only lights the Canon had left on were near the altar, so since he had gone from the crypt the whole of its bottom end had been plunged in deep shadow. The bed of the furnace, under its big scalloped canopy, now looked like a black cavern; yet it seemed to C.B. that wisps of steam were rising from it. There came a heavy thud, then something began to writhe upon the furnace bed among the greyish swirls of steam.

  C.B. drew a sharp breath. His heart began to hammer violently. He was seized by a new fear, and one totally different from that which had afflicted him since he had drunk the poison from the chalice. That had been straight physical fear at the realisation that he was in acute danger and within twenty minutes, or less, might find himself face to face with a most painful death. This was a terror of the spirit.

  The walls of this ancient stone chamber had witnessed many fearsome rites. Only God and the Devil could know to what abominations Copely-Syle had resorted in order to give his homunculi life. That life at present was only fish-like, and they were powerless to leave their glass prisons. But the whole place reeked of Evil. For his hellish acts of creation the Canon would have had to compel the aid of those strange potent Spirits that govern the behaviour of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. He would also have had to call up those brutish groping foeti from the Pit; things that lived upon a lower plane, yet were always seeking means to enter this one and, given propitious circumstances, could not only appear to human eyes, but also take hideous solid form. It was even possible that to complete his devilish work he had had to invoke some chill intelligence of the Outer Circle: an entity beside which even the terror inspired by the loathsome horrors of the Pit would pale; for such Sataii could drive men mad or strike them dead, as had proved the case with Crowley and McAleister.

  Fearful of what he might see, C.B. peered with straining eyes into the shadows. Within a few seconds of his having heard the second stirrings, he knew that his senses had not deceived him. The bed of the furnace was no longer flat. It seemed to have arched itself up into a hump. Among the smoke and steam some fearsome thing was materialising from it. Swiftly the hump rose, a whitish blob appeared in its middle and it assumed an irregular outline. C.B. distinctly heard the coke crunch under it. Next moment it heaved itself outward from the furnace bed and landed with a thud upon the floor.

  Now it was hidden from C.B. by the tables. His spine seemed to be dissolving into water. Shrinking back, he grasped the arms of the chair, while cold sweat broke out anew on his face. For an instant an intense bitterness surged through his mind at the thought that he should have devised a means of saving himself from the Canon, only to fall a victim to one of the Satanic forces that he had made his familiars. He could hear the monster scrabbling on the ground. Dreading intensely what he would see when it emerged from behind the tables, he closed his eyes and began to pray. Urgently, frantically, he called upon the God of Mercy, Peace and Love to help him in his dire extremity.

  There came the sound of swift movement across the stone flags of the crypt; then, as a lump rose in his throat that almost choked him, his prayer was answered. Loud, clear, unmistakable, John’s voice was calling him by name; and, an instant later, a human hand grasped his shoulder.

  As C.B. opened his eyes, John’s words came tumbling out. ‘Thank God I’ve found you. Upson and that pilot drove up about twenty minutes ago and I snuck over to eavesdrop. I caught the old boy’s voice saying that you were waiting for him in the chapel, and that he was just about to pull a fast one on you. I lost ten minutes trying to find a way in here but the chimney is a good three feet square inside.

  ‘Well done! Well done!’ breathed C.B. ‘If you hadn’t found me the odds are I’d have been dead before morning. But we haven’t a moment to lose. That fiend may be back here any second. Look! There’s a sword on the altar. Use it to cut me free.’

  Obediently John snatched up the sword but as he clasped it he cast a scared glance over his shoulder, and muttered, ‘This place gives me cold shivers down my spine. What’s been going on here?’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ C.B. said impatiently. ‘For God’s sake cut these strings.’

  The blade of the sacrificial sword was sharp as a razor. Once John set to work the strings parted under it with as little resistance as though they were threads of cotton. Yet even for so short a time C.B. could not keep his eyes on the strokes that were liberating him. A new fear impelled him to keep darting swift glances from side to side into the shadows behind the two rows of pillars. The possibility of the Canon surprising them before they could get away had now taken second place in his mind. It seemed as if some malignant unseen force, already in the crypt, was stirring into evil life with intent to prevent their leaving it.

  As the last string snapped C.B. jerked himself to his feet, and John, his thin face now chalk-white, gasped: ‘Come on! For Christ’s sake let’s get out of here!’

  Side by side, they began to run down the crypt. But their feet felt as though they were weighted with lead. The strength seemed to be ebbing from their limbs as though they had received many wounds and their life-blood was draining away with every step they took. Halfway along the tables they faltered into a walk. The air ahead of them no longer had the feeling of air. It had become intensely cold and was as though they were endeavouring to force their way through water.

  In a half-strangled voice, C.B. began to recite the Lord’s Prayer aloud. ‘Our Father which art in Heaven …’

  Almost instantly the pressure eased and they found themselves able to stagger forward to the furnace. When jumping from it John had pulled his mackintosh after him. Sooty and scorched, it lay on the ground nearby. As he snatched it up, C.B., still praying aloud, looked hastily round for something else to throw on the bed of coke that would protect their feet from burning. His glance lit on the robes used by the Canon when he officiated as a minister of the Black priesthood. They were of heavy scarlet satin embroidered in black with magical insignia, and hung upon a stand on the far side of the door. While John sprayed the top layer of coke with water, C.B. fetched the vestments and flung them on to the hissing furnace bed; then he cried: ‘Go on, up you go!’

  John hesitated a moment, glancing at C.B.’s bleeding wrists; but the older man pushed him forward, so he scrambled up into the steam-filled cavity. His head and shoulders disappeared into the wide funnel made by the chimney, and he quickly began to feel about for hand-holds inside it. Within a few seconds his searching fingers found the iron rungs tha
t had been used by sweeps’ urchins in times gone by. As he began to haul himself up, C.B. followed. Two minutes later, grimy with soot and half choked by coke fumes, they stood side by side on the roof of the chapel.

  Yet so powerful was the evil radiating from the gateway to Hell below them that they did not feel safe from pursuit. Scarcely heeding the danger of slipping on the wet roof, or tripping in the darkness, they scrambled down its slope to the nearest gutter, hung by it for a moment, then dropped the eight feet to the ground. Picking themselves up from the soaking grass, by a common impulse they ran round the side of the house, across the garden to the road, and down it for nearly a quarter of a mile before the fresh night air and the rain in their faces restored their sense of security sufficiently for them to pull up.

  In their terror they had passed the car; but now they walked back to it, got in and bound up C.B.’s wrists as well as they could with their handkerchiefs. Then they lit cigarettes. After a few puffs they began to feel more like themselves, and C.B. gave John an outline of the hour and a quarter he had spent with the Canon. At the description of the homunculi John was nearly sick, but his nausea turned to fury when he learnt of the fate planned for Christina, and on hearing of the cold-blooded murder which would at that moment have been taking place had he not got C.B. away, he wanted to drive off at once to fetch the police.

  C.B. laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Easy, partner! It’s not quite so simple as all that. You could give evidence that you found me tied to a chair; but that’s no proof of intended murder. The old warlock, his Gippy servant and the airman would probably all swear themselves blind that they had caught me breaking into the house; and it is a fact that you broke in later. If they took the line that we had gone to the police first with a cooked-up story, because we feared being caught and charged tomorrow, it would be only our word against theirs.’

  ‘Yours would be taken. Your people in London would vouch for you.’

  ‘Oh yes. A telephone call to the Department would bring someone down tomorrow to identify me and give me a good character. In fact had you fetched the police before coming in to get me, that’s what I should have had to do. It would have been worth it, even as an alternative to remaining locked up in a cellar indefinitely, which was the worst I feared when I went in. All the same, I’m extremely glad that you managed to get me out without calling in the minions of the law.’

  ‘From what you tell me, if I’d spent half an hour collecting them before going in your goose would have been cooked by the time we got there.’

  ‘Yes. That’s one reason; and I can never thank you enough, John, for the guts you displayed in coming in on your own when you did. Another reason is that, even when acting officially, I am no more entitled to break into people’s houses without a warrant than any other citizen so if Copely-Syle had charged me with breaking and entering that would have put me in quite a nasty spot.’

  ‘I see. All the same I think it’s monstrous that this criminal lunatic should be allowed to get away with attempted murder and all the other devilry he is up to.’

  ‘We won’t let him. But we’ve got to play our cards carefully if we are to lay him by the heels without burning our own fingers. We’ve got to get some solid evidence against him before we can make our next move.’

  ‘What about the homunculi? Surely his having those filthy creatures in the house is against the law?’

  ‘I rather doubt it. Besides, we have not an atom of proof that he intends to harm anyone or is, in fact, engaged in anything which could not be defended as a scientific experiment. All the same, I wish we had remained there long enough to smash the jars and kill the horrible things inside them.’

  John shivered. ‘I don’t think I could have done it. I mean, stay on there for a moment longer than I positively had to. I wasn’t frightened about going in—at least no more than I would have been when breaking into any other place where I might have got a sock on the jaw—but once inside I felt as if I was being watched by invisible eyes all the time. It was as though there was something indescribably evil in the shadows behind me: something that had the power to rend and destroy, and that at any second might leap out on to the back of my neck. Then, just before you began to pray, I felt as if I was being suffocated; and I began to fear that I’d never get out at all.’

  C.B. nodded. ‘I felt the same. The explanation is that the place has become the haunt of some very nasty elementals. As the Canon’s familiars they would naturally try, in their blind, fumbling way, to prevent our escape. Perhaps if we had lingered they might have materialized. Anyhow, I had the feeling that they might, and I was scared stiff. My one thought was to get away while the going was good, and I wasn’t capable of thinking of anything else till we were well down the road.’

  Stubbing out his cigarette, John put his foot on the self-starter. As it ceased to whirr and the engine began to fire, he said, ‘Since we’ve had the luck to get out all right, I’m glad we went in. It enabled you to find out a tremendous lot, and at least we know what we are up against now. I wish we could have made a job of it tonight, and called in the police to haul him off to jail; but since you’ve ruled that out, the sooner we can grab a hot toddy, and go to bed, the better.’

  ‘Not so fast, laddie,’ C.B. replied, as the car gathered speed. ‘I’ll gladly dig the barman out to fix us hot toddies, whatever time we get back to Colchester, but I’ve no intention of returning yet. First, I mean to try to pick up a little evidence against his Satanic Reverence.’

  Slowing down the car, John turned and stared at him. ‘You … you don’t mean that you’re going back into that hellish place?’

  ‘No. I’m not poking my head into that hornets’ nest again till the hornets have had a chance to settle down. But we are up to our necks in this thing now, and we’ve got no time to lose. I hate to think what my Chief will have to say should matters go wrong, and you had better keep out of it; but I really do mean to risk finding myself in the dock this time. I intend to break, enter and, I hope, burgle private premises without the least excuse to justify my act if I am caught.’

  Chapter 17

  The Mystery of the Grange

  John let out a low whistle, then said, ‘It’s not for me to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but d’you really think you ought to take such a risk, C.B.? I mean, of blotting your copy-book so badly that even your Department will feel that it must wash its hands of you?’

  ‘Yes. I think so in a case like this, for which no provision is made by our ordinary laws. I don’t want to sound stuffy, but there are times when every man must be guided by his own conscience, and this is one of them. We have learnt tonight that we are up against not just a dabbler in Black Magic who threatens the well-being of one young woman, but a Satanist of the first order, who is striving to perfect and launch upon the world one of the worst horrors that even his master, the Devil, can have conceived. To stop that I am prepared to go to any lengths.’

  ‘Since you put it that way, you are absolutely right; but where is this place you intend to break into?’

  ‘I mean to pay a midnight visit to The Grange.’

  ‘What good will that do us, as Beddows isn’t there?’

  ‘Probably none. It’s just a long shot; but there’s a chance that we might find some useful pointers to Beddows’ whereabouts and his tie-up with the Canon.’

  John spoke with a touch of deference. ‘I don’t pretend to be psychic, but I didn’t at all like the atmosphere of The Grange when we called there this evening. Perhaps that is because it is such a gloomy old place, but as these two beauties appear to be mixed up together I should think it is quite on the cards that The Grange, too, has got some pretty nasty spooks in it. Haven’t you had enough of that sort of thing for one night?’

  ‘To be honest, John, I have,’ C.B. replied quietly. ‘But in the late war, whenever one of the R.A.F. boys was shot down, or made a crash landing, they used to send him up again just as soon as they could. It was an excellent princ
iple. That’s the way to keep one’s nerve, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the Canon and his pals must be on the qui vive I’d make myself go back into that crypt. As such a move would mean sticking out my neck a bit too far, I’m going into the moated Grange at midnight instead.’

  ‘Well, you’re the boss.’ John tried to make his voice sound flippant. The few minutes he had spent in the crypt had been more than enough for him. He could only guess what C.B. must have been through while bound hand and foot there and expecting to be murdered within the hour; but he knew that to show admiration for the elder man would only embarrass them both, so without further remark he took the car round the village green and drove back the way they had come.

  As they were passing the church, C.B. said, ‘All the same, John, you mustn’t get the idea I’m about to risk running into something very nasty, or having to appear in the dock, for no better reason than to test my own nerve. I’m going into The Grange because this matter has become too urgent for me to neglect any chance of getting a new line on these people. We left France with the object of interviewing Beddows, because we felt confident that he would be able to tell us what lay behind Copely-Syle’s attempts to get hold of Christina. We have found that out from the Canon himself; but what we have learnt tonight makes it more important than ever that we should get hold of Beddows with the least possible delay. At the moment we have only half the picture. He must be able to give us the other half. We’ve got to know why it was Christina that the Canon selected as his potential victim, and why her father left her marooned in the South of France. I have an idea that Copely-Syle may be blackmailing him. If so, we’ll get something on the enemy that way. If not, he may be able to provide us with some other line by which we can use the normal processes of the law to spike the Canon’s guns. But we’ve got to trace him first, and it seems to me that our best chance of doing that is by raiding his house. With a little luck we may find some papers there which will give us a lead to where he has got to.’