‘Then get to it! Money is no object.’
Giving Beddows an unfriendly stare Jules remarked, ‘If I do anything at all it will be for John, because he prevented that crazy daughter of yours from killing my father.’ Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘Still, we may as well look after the old firm as far as expenses are concerned. How much are you willing to pay?’
‘I’ll give you a thousand pounds down, and another thousand if you get results.’
‘Good. I’ll have my people get a line on along the coast. There is an old priest at Cagnes who has a pretty gruesome reputation, and a fortune-teller in Monte Carlo who does not stick to telling the cards. There is one man in Nice, too, who might know something—if only we can persuade him to talk. He is an elderly cabaret singer with a husky bass voice, and he does his act at a dirty little dive off the Place Massena. One of his stunts is to intone the Paternoster backwards. However, the telephoning I am about to do is strictly private; so I must ask you to leave me now. I may be unlucky; in any case it will be a couple of hours or more before I am likely to have anything to tell you; so you had better make yourselves as comfortable as you can in the lounge downstairs.’
Beddows produced the thousand pounds; and John, now blessing the impulse which had caused him to save the Marquis from a bullet in the heart, thanked Jules for what he was about to do. Then they went down, collected Molly from the car, and ordered tea in the lounge as a means of killing a little time, although none of the three felt like drinking it.
John never remembered a longer hour than the one that followed. From time to time one of them endeavoured to start a conversation, but it inevitably tailed off into silence after the exchange of a few sentences; and, now that he had the leisure to con the cold, hard facts, the slenderness of their chance of saving Christina became more and more apparent to him. He had pinned his faith on either bribing or bullying Jules into giving them the information that they needed so desperately; but it had turned out that he had not got it to give. He had, through a strange freak of fate, become friendly instead of hostile; but, in the event, all that he had actually done was cynically to accept a thousand pounds to institute the same sort of enquiry as Malouet was already engaged upon gratuitously.
John knew that on the Riviera there must be more people than anywhere else in the world who, having once been rich, had through wars, revolutions or gambling lost all but a pittance, and so were peculiarly susceptible to the temptation to attempt to regain something of their past affluence by trafficking with the supernatural; yet it seemed beyond all reason to hope that, in a matter of a few hours, one such could be found who was not only in the Canon’s confidence, but prepared to betray him.
Outside, the sun was shining. Through the broad windows could be seen the lovely prospect of the blue, unruffled bay; with, in the foreground, two mimosa trees in blossom, a row of striped yellow cactus, and some brilliant scarlet geraniums in pots. Inside, there was the constant passing of well-dressed men and women, laughing and carefree, all intent on the enjoyment of a summer holiday snatched from the grim winter in northern lands whence most of them came.
The contrast between the scene and the thoughts of the little party at the tea-table made the long wait all the more intolerable. The minutes crawled by. For John each of them brought a new vision of Christina—as she might be now, locked in some cellar; or in an attic room with barred windows; or with her clothes removed so that she could not escape, lying in bed half drugged—as she would be tonight, carried away again, stifling in a trunk, to some secret place; fighting on her release until she was beaten into submission; stripped and cowering among a group of ghouls excited to a frenzy by unnatural lusts; screaming as the sharp sacrificial knife severed the muscles of her throat; still and dead with the blood gushing from her neck.
At half-past five John ordered a round of drinks. In the next hour he knocked back five double Martinis. As he ordered a sixth Molly laid a hand on his arm and said: ‘Johnny, haven’t you had enough—anyhow for the time being?’
He turned and gave her a weak semblance of his old familiar grin. ‘Don’t worry, Mother. People can’t get drunk when they feel as wretched as I do.’
It was a quarter to seven when a page came to their table and said that Count Jules de Grasse would like to see them upstairs. Molly went out to the car; the two men hurried over to the lift. As soon as Jules had let them into the suite he said: ‘I think I have the information you want; but there is one proviso that I must make before I go any further. I require you both to give me your word of honour that you will not inform the police, either directly, or indirectly through your friends who brought them to the Ile de Port Cros, if I enable you to make use of the tip-off I have secured.’
‘Why?’ asked John.
‘Because you will need guides to take you to the place where the ceremony is to be performed; and the only guides with which I can provide you at such short notice are two smugglers who are wanted by the police. They are key men in our organisation for exchanging goods across the Italian frontier. What is more, they trust me; so I cannot allow their safety to be jeopardised by the police being brought to the scene by other guides at round about the same time as they arrive there with you.’
‘The Canon will probably have a number of people with him,’ Beddows pointed out uneasily. ‘Last night I … I was subjected to a shock that seems to have aged me greatly; so I’m afraid I wouldn’t prove the man I was, in a fight. With only my help John Fountain might not be able to overcome them. In fact, instead of rescuing Ellen the two of us may be knocked on the head.’
Jules shrugged. ‘You must take your chance of that. In an affair of this kind the participants are certain to be nervy. If you use your wits you should be able to succeed in breaking the meeting up. Once my friends have taken you to the place and left you, I naturally have no objection to your getting help from wherever you like; but I will not have you telephone to the police in advance any information likely to lead them to the place to which you will be taken. Now, what do you say?’
Glancing at one another, Beddows and John nodded; so the latter said, ‘All right; we both promise.’
‘Good! I accept your promises; but even so it is unnecessary that you should know your final destination for the next hour or two. It is enough for me to tell you that the job is to be done up in the hills behind Nice. Drive back towards the city, but do not enter it. Across the Var and about two kilometres past the airport you will come to a turning that leads inland up to the little town of St Pancrace. Outside the church there you will find two men waiting for you. The taller of the two has a red beard. They are your guides, and will take you to the spot where the Canon and his friends are meeting. But I should warn you that you have none too much time. The meeting is due to start at nine o’clock.’
‘It would be,’ Beddows muttered. ‘Christina’s birth hour is nine forty-five, and they would want to perform the … the actual sacrifice as near that time as possible.’
‘And it is nearly seven already!’ exclaimed John. ‘Come on! We must not waste a second!’
Beddows threw the second thousand pounds worth of bank-notes on the table; and with brief goodbyes to Jules they ran from the room. As they came hurrying out of the hotel Molly saw them and started up the car. John took the wheel, and within three minutes of leaving Jules’s suite they were on their way back to Nice.
It was still light, but there was a sharp chill in the air and the end of the sunny day was fast approaching. There was quite a lot of traffic on the road—auto-buses taking workpeople home and bringing less well-off holiday-makers back from day excursions, many motorcycles, and the cars of the wealthy carrying couples and foursomes to neighbouring towns to dinner—but John snaked his way through it at high speed without taking too many risks that might have brought them to grief.
Before they had gone far he said, ‘It would save a little time if we could stick to N.7. and cut across inland from Fréjus to Cannes, instead of
going round by the coast road; but now we have to tackle the Canon’s crowd on our own I think it’s more important that we should call at the villa to collect some weapons.’
‘No,’ replied Molly promptly. ‘I thought this afternoon that we might need the armaments before we were through; so you can go by N.7. While you were dropping your bags at the villa on our way out I picked up some things. C.B. has still got my big gun, but I have the small one in my bag, and I’ve two heavy truncheons, knuckle-dusters and knives in the back of the car for you. I put in a couple of extra torches and a bottle of brandy as well.’
‘Good old Mother! You’ve thought of everything. I wish you’d let me have your gun, though.’
‘No, darling. I’m hanging on to that. This is a chance in a lifetime to see how it works.’
The streets of St Maxime and Fréjus hardly caused John a check, but he had to slow down to go through Cannes, and by then the sun was setting. When they passed Antibes the sky behind them was a rich glow of orange and salmon pink which by the time they crossed the River Var had faded to a few streaks. It was half-past eight and the light had gone as they wound their way up the hill into St Pancrace.
The sweep of their headlights picked out a man who was standing on the steps of the church. As John pulled up he came forward. He was tall and bearded. Leaning down to the car window he asked in a low voice: ‘Has Monsieur come from St Tropez?’
‘Yes,’ replied John. ‘We are the friends of Monsieur le Comte.’
‘Good!’ nodded the man, and went on, ‘Monsieur will excuse me if I do not introduce myself. It will serve if you call me Number One and my companion, who you will meet later, Number Two. Do you know the road to Falicon?’
John shook his head.
‘It is through Gairaut and no great distance; but perhaps it would be best if Madame would allow me to occupy the front seat next to Monsieur.’
The rearrangement was soon made by Molly getting out and joining Beddows in the back. As they set off along the twisting road up hill again, John asked: ‘May we know where we are going?’
‘Monsieur has given his word to M. le Comte not to communicate with the police until I and my friend have left him?’
‘Yes; we won’t let you down about that.’
‘Then I am about to take you to the Cave of the Bats.’
Into John’s mind there flashed a memory of the first time he had been in the crypt at The Priory, and had seen the bat nailed upside down to the broken crucifix on the altar. He suppressed a shudder as Beddows asked, in French that had an appalling accent but was just comprehensible: ‘What sort of place is it?’
‘A very unusual cave, Monsieur. Most caves are natural fissures in the rock and run more or less level for some distance into a mountainside; but this is not at all like that. It is entered by dropping through a hole high up on the side of a hill and was made by man, or at least has been much adapted by him, as it has several passages of uniform size and one quite large vaulted chamber. Even the archaeologists who visit it at times cannot say what race of men first used it. There is a legend that the Phoenicians offered up human sacrifices to their god, Moloch, there; but many think that long before that prehistoric man had hewed the little temple nearly a hundred metres below the surface of the hillside as a place to perform his secret rites with doves and virgins.’
John felt the palms of his hands go damp upon the wheel. He had expected that he might have to break into some little wayside chapel which was being desecrated, or stumble his way through the ruins of a long-since-abandoned monastery; but this underground warren which had been the scene of countless ritual murders through the centuries sounded infinitely more terrifying. He began to pray that they would catch up with the Satanists before the latter reached their horrible rendezvous.
After they had covered another five kilometres up the winding hill road they approached a group of houses, and Number One said, ‘This is the hamlet of St Michael. It is here that we leave the car. To the left of the crossroads there is an inn. You can park your car in the open space alongside it.’
As they pulled up and got out, a figure emerged from the shadow of some trees and gave a low whistle. Number One replied to it and the figure approached. It was Number Two. In a husky voice he made his report.
‘The tip-off that M. le Comte got about the meeting being here was a right one. The party arrived in five cars nearly an hour ago. There were thirteen of them; nine men and four women. Out of the cars they unloaded a packing-case, a big trunk, two stretchers to carry them on and some suitcases; then they sent all the cars away. One of the men led the way as guide the and the other eight carried the loads on the stretchers. It was all very orderly with everything evidently arranged beforehand, as none of them uttered a word. They just formed a little procession and set off up the hill.’
John drew a quick breath. ‘Then they are nearly an hour ahead of us! I was told that the meeting was not due to start till nine o’clock. It can’t be much more than twenty-to, and they may have started already.’
‘No, Monsieur.’ Number One shook his head. ‘They should be punctual, but not much in advance of the time set. They cannot have yet reached the cave. With burdens to carry over rough ground and uphill all the way they will find it a good hour’s walk.’
Beddows swore, then apologised to Molly. Like John, he felt that the fact that they should be able to catch up a little through having nothing to carry was small consolation. He, too, had had an eye on the time, but had not realised that a long, hard walk lay ahead of them; so he had believed that there was a good hope of their coming up with the Canon’s party before it reached the cave. Now that hope was dashed and they would have no alternative but to go down into it.
‘There are times when I become profane myself,’ Molly replied a little grimly; then she added to John, ‘I shan’t keep you a moment, but I’m just going into the inn.’
‘Would it not be as well if Madame remained there?’ suggested Number One.
‘Yes, Mother,’ said John quickly, ‘you must. You can’t come up to this place with us.’
‘Of course I’m coming,’ she retorted, as she turned away.
‘No, you are not,’ he called after her. ‘I won’t let you! And, anyhow, we can’t possibly wait.’
‘If you don’t I’ll get lost trying to follow you and probably fall down a precipice,’ she called back. ‘I tell you I won’t keep you a moment; but I’ve been out all day and I simply must pop in here before I start climbing that hill.’
As she disappeared through the lighted doorway of the inn, John and Beddows got the weapons and torches out of the back of the car and distributed them in various pockets. Molly was as good as her word and rejoined them after a few minutes. Then, with Number Two leading the way, they set off in Indian file up a track that curved round behind some outhouses and chicken runs.
Within a few minutes they were out on the bare hillside and began to appreciate how rough the walking was going to be. The path was barely a foot wide and in places disappeared entirely. It wound in and out among knee-high boulders between which grew myrtle, wild thyme and a low leafless shrub that had sharp prickles. Before they had covered two hundred yards they had barked their ankles half a dozen times stumbling over rocks and Molly’s nylons were ruined.
‘The Canon and his crew must have had the hell of a job getting up here with loaded stretchers,’ John muttered.
‘They were using torches, and that would have made keeping to the track much easier for them,’ replied Number Two. ‘But we dare not do so, in case one of them is acting as a sentry on the hilltop and spots us following them.’
The path zigzagged diagonally along the slope of the hill and on their left its crest was visible against a starlit sky. After twenty minutes’ gruelling tramp they reached a sparse belt of low trees, and Molly stopped to ask breathlessly: ‘How much further is it?’
‘We are not halfway yet, Madame,’ Number One told her. ‘But higher up you will f
ind the going a little less difficult.’
‘Why not wait for us here, Mother?’ John pleaded.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I shall manage, somehow.’ Panting, they stumbled on through the trees until they came to a series of low terraces, which suggested that the hilltop had once been a Roman fort. Now they had to scramble up the rough stone walls of each terrace. Even with help Molly was sobbing for breath, and upon mounting the second she panted: ‘Is … is the entrance to the cave … on the hilltop here?’
‘No, Madame.’ Number Two shook his head. ‘We have to go up this way; but when we reach the top we have another half-mile to do along the crest of the ridge.’
Gamely she struggled on up the last terraces, where there were again some trees and the low walls of ruins that might have been the remains of a few cottages. The men were all conscious that she was delaying the pace of the party, and John was half crazy with exasperation, but had not the heart to insist on leaving her behind.
Coming out from among the scattered trees they had to scramble down a further series of terraces, which proved nearly as arduous as getting up those they had scaled five minutes earlier. As they reached the last, Number Two halted. From their elevation they could now see the moon just over the crest of a much higher ridge to the east, and its light faintly lit the scene. Pointing along the ridge on which they stood he said: ‘Can you see that blob of white ahead of us and a little way down the slope to our right? That is a small pyramid of rough stone, erected no one knows when, to mark the entrance to the cave.’
They could just make it out; but Molly had sunk sobbing and exhausted on to a large flat rock.
‘I’m sorry!’ she gasped, as the others again moved forward. ‘I can’t go on yet! And I’m holding you up. You must leave me. I … I’ll follow you when I’ve had a few minutes’ rest.’
To the Devil, a Daughter Page 38
