Strange Conflict (42 page)

To do so was unthinkable; for it is written that no spirit is ever sent a greater load of suffering than by exerting its whole will it can bear. To commit suicide, as a means of escaping any other form of death, is, therefore, to interfere with one's kama. All suffering is the result of past debts which have been piled up in previous lives, and these must be worked off sooner or later. In consequence suicide is no escape—only a postponement—and for those who are weak enough to take it there is the additional penalty to be borne: for a greater or lesser time, according to the cowardice of the case, the spirit is not free to continue the great journey but remains tied, and must go through the last few awful moments of the self inflicted act again and again and again, until at last it is released.

‘If only we hadn't lost the second lot of impedimenta,' said Richard, after a long silence, ‘we could have made a pentacle in which to die. It might at least have served to protect us for those few minutes in which one blacks out at the end of every incar, and given us a sporting chance to fight afterwards.'

The Duke did not reply, but it was those words which caused a great light to dawn suddenly in his mind. He had always known that in his magical operations he was not quite White, but just a little Grey. He had not used his powers for self-advancement or personal aims, but almost unwittingly he still allowed his own deep-rooted passions and convictions to influence him. For example, he did not regard the Nazis from an entirely detached point of view, as a menace to the welfare of mankind; he
hated
them, with all the hatred of which his virile personality was capable; and that was wrong.

Perhaps it was because of that slight uncertainty of his own powers that in his magical operations he had always followed the rituals of the text-books and utilised such things as garlic, as a foetida grass, curcifixes, horseshoes and many other symbols. These things in themselves were, he knew, only focuses to attract power; they had not an atom of power in themselves, but were just bundles of herbs or pieces of wood and iron. A pure White Magician, confident in his own strength, would have despised them and relied entirely upon his own will.

Without any of these things, or pentacles, or mumbled phrases from ancient mysteries, he would have gone out, fearless and alone from his body on to the astral to give battle. In that strange moment all things were at last made clear to the Duke. He had been a coward. He had shirked the conflict when he should have gone out to fight, relying alone upon the intrinsic fact that Light is more powerful than Darkness.

As he sat there he thought that he could feel a slight stiffening of his limbs. On moving them a little he was sure of it. The poison had now really begun to work on him. But it was not too late. If he did not wait there to die, but threw himself into a self-induced trance and voluntarily left his body before it was taken from him, there was still a chance that he might defeat the enemy.

Suddenly he spoke. ‘Listen, all of you; I'm going to leave you now. Whatever may happen in the next few hours, don't despair. I shall be with you though you will not be able to see me. You will, I know, support with courage all that may be sent to you. But I am going ahead because by doing so there is just a possibility that I may yet be able to avert the awful fate with which we are all threatened. If I fail we must all suffer—perhaps for many years to come; but remember that to merit such suffering we must all have done something very evil in the past for which we shall now be paying. We have all loved each other very dearly, therefore nothing can separate us permanently. Either we shall meet again as victors in our earthly bodies, before many hours are gone, or when we have paid our debt we shall meet in those higher, happier spheres which you all know.'

Stretching out his hands towards them, his grey eyes filled with a new and brilliant light, he added: ‘May the blessing and protection of the Timeless Ones be upon you all in your hour of trial.'

Such was the awe with which his now radiant face filled them that none of them sought to dissuade him from his intention. His words had been too grave for any response other than a murmur of encouragement in the attempt that he was about to make.

When he had performed the rite of sealing the nine openings of his body and had commended it to the protection of the Powers, Marie Lou kissed his cheek tenderly; then they all sent out their thoughts to strengthen him as he settled himself in a corner of one of the settees and closed his eyes. For a few moments he concentrated his will, then his body gradually went limp and they knew that he had left it.

Directly he was free of his earthly form he cast a long last look upon the loved faces of his friends, then gathering his strength he soared up through the deck and out above the town. He could not give battle unless the Black Magician was also out of his body, but as it was not yet two o'clock he hoped to be able to catch him asleep during the midday siesta—in fact, much depended upon his doing so, as otherwise he would be deprived of any chance to save his friends from the first terrible trials which they would be called upon to endure after the semblance of life had left them. His immediate and very urgent problem, therefore, was to find the Satanist.

In a flash he was over the house on the hillside, but, as he expected, he found it a burnt-out ruin. There were some out-buildings about a hundred yards away from that end of the house which had been the servants' quarters, and in them had been stacked a certain amount of furniture which had been salvaged from the fire. But the Doctor was not there.

It seemed to de Richleau that there was quite a possibility that the enemy had taken up his quarters in some neighbour's house, so he visited a number of dwellings in the immediate vicinity—but without success. Swift as thought he sped back to Port-au-Prince.

The midday quiet still held the town. The streets were almost bare of traffic and there were very few pedestrians about. Even the considerably reduced crowd on the wharf-side had either congregated in the bars and cafés or had taken advantage of such patches of shade as could be found behind sheds and stacks of merchandise to sprawl upon the ground and doze.

In three thousand seconds the Duke traversed three thousand rooms in various buildings, but Doctor Saturday was not in any of them, and the task of finding him was, de Richleau realised, like looking for a needle in a haystack. The hour in which the Duke had hoped to accomplish so much was already up. It was three o'clock, and everywhere in the sun-scorched town people were waking and rising from beds, sofas, rocking-chairs and straw palliasses to set about the second half of their daily occupations.

Very reluctantly de Richleau decided that it would be waste of effort to search further. He had keyed himself up to give instant battle at any moment, but it was virtually certain that the Doctor—wherever he was—would by now have woken, and it would be many hours before he slept again. During those hours the prisoners on the gunboat must suffer all that was sent to them and the Duke knew to his sorrow that he would be unable to give them even comfort—let alone more material aid. He could only wait, praying that his courage would not ebb in the long interval that must now elapse before he could enter on his own ordeal.

Knowing that the sorcerer must sooner or later take possession of the bodies of his friends, he returned to the ship and found that there was already a marked change in their condition. At the moment he arrived Rex, with faltering tongue and laboured breathing, was complaining of the stiffness in his muscles and was endeavouring to flex them. But Simon roused himself to mutter that he felt just the same and that it would probably only prolong the mental strain if he fought against it. Richard was sitting with Marie Lou on his lap; her arms were about his neck and her cheek was pressed against his. The eyes of both were closed and it looked as though they were asleep; but the Duke knew that they were not.

For half an hour he remained there, watching the poison do its work and comforting himself a little with the thought that at least it did not appear to be causing them any great physical agony; although they were obviously suffering mentally as they felt their limbs gradually stiffening and going dead.

It is not an easy thing to surrender quietly and philosophically without any attempt to fight against a creeping paralysis which one knows must end in death, and from time to time they appeared to struggle a little against it. Simon was the first to go; he just seemed to drop asleep. Soon afterwards Marie Lou gave a little shudder and lay still. Richard, his face contorted, clutched her small body and strove to jerk himself up, but the effort proved too much and he fell back with his eyes still open but fixed and staring. Rex was the last to go; with a Herculean effort he staggered to his feet and drew himself up to his full, magnificent height, then he pitched forward across Simon, his great limbs completely rigid.

Although they all now had the appearance of death their spirits did not emerge from their bodies, and de Richleau knew that they were chained there, unable to free themselves yet equally unable any more to animate their frames through their own wills.

For some time nothing happened and it was nearly four o'clock when the officer in the sky-blue uniform entered the cabin with some papers in his hand. He gave one glance at the five still forms, uttered a shriek of terror and fled.

De Richleau was in no mood to be amused at anything, otherwise, having followed the Captain up on deck, he would have derived a considerable amount of fun from the scene that ensued. A number of Haitian notables had evidently been about to enter the cabin behind the officer, and in his panic-stricken flight he knocked several of them over. Without waiting to ascertain the cause of his terror they picked themselves up and came tumbling up the hatchway after him, to find that he had continued his flight by leaping for the gangway and dashing across it to the wharf.

In response to their shouts a squad of the
Gardes d'Haiti
which was standing at ease on the quay, headed him off and half-led, half-pushed, him on board again, where for some moments he stood on the quarterdeck, his eyes rolling and his knees knocking together from excess of fear, quite unable to speak.

At last they managed to reassure him sufficiently for him to stammer out that all five of the prisoners had died from some unknown cause; and that, since they had been most evil people, he was terrified lest their Duppies, or spirits, which must still be lurking there, would get him.

This news filled the deputies and generals with obvious consternation and they hastily withdrew from the companionway, many of them even leaving the ship altogether to view further events from the safer distance of the quay. As the news spread among the crowd many of the superstitious Negroes who were rubbernecking there evidently considered discretion the better part of valour and swiftly disappeared into the side-streets and alleys. For the spirits of five powerful Bocors to be loose was to them very far from being a joke.

The notables, too, would obviously have liked to leave such a dangerous vicinity, but apparently felt that their prestige would suffer if they took to flight; so the frock-coated politicians and ‘musical-comedy' officers remained talking excitedly on either side of the gangway; but although each urged the other none of them could be persuaded to venture near the companion-way again.

De Richleau wished for a moment that he and his friends were all back in their bodies and had the use of them, as if they had walked up on deck at that moment there was no doubt that they would have been regarded with such dread that no one would have dared to lay a hand upon them. Soldiers, sailors, deputies and the common people would all have bolted like so many rabbits while the prisoners selected at their leisure another motor-boat and made their escape to sea.

However, the bodies of his four friends were now, for all practical purposes, no more than corpses, and had he endeavoured to return to his own he would only, he knew, have found it rigid and uninhabitable from the poison which had flowed through his blood-stream; so he continued to
listen to the excited conversation of the Haitians, which in his astral he could follow perfectly easily although they were talking in Creole.

At length several of them reached a decision and set off at a quick walk towards the town. A quarter of an hour later they returned, accompanied by the Catholic priest in whose church the Duke and his friends had taken refuge that morning.

With no trace of fear the gaunt, sandy-haired priest walked straight down the companion-way, holding a small crucifix in front of him. Reaching the cabin, he pronounced a long Latin exorcism to drive away evil spirits. At its conclusion he turned in a matter-of-fact way to the crowd of half-castes who were gathered as anxious spectators behind him and told them that there was nothing more to fear—they could now proceed to remove the bodies.

At the orders of one of the more couragous Haitian politicians, who had remained throughout on the deck, the sailors produced some stretchers from the sick bay of the gunboat, placed the bodies upon them and covered each with a blanket. They were then taken ashore, the priest leading the procession.

When they reached the wharf there ensued a short discussion. The priest wished to take the bodies to the hospital in order that a doctor might certify them as dead, but the Haitians were very much against this and insisted that the five Duppies were doubtless still hovering somewhere in the neighbourhood, only waiting the opportunity to create the most frightful mischief, and that the priest must therefore take the corpses straight to the church; otherwise the evil Duppies might get into some of the sick people in the hospital and possess them.

A compromise was reached, by which the priest agreed that the bodies should be taken to the vestry of his church' provided that a doctor came to certify them there.

This having been arranged the squad of
Gardes d'Haiti
fell in, the procession set off once more and the stretcher-bearers carried their burdens to the vestry from which de Richleau's party had made their escape earlier in the day. Soon afterwards the Negro surgeon arrived with two com
panions from the hospital. After a brief examination of each corpse they reached the unanimous opinion that there was no life in any of them and wrote out the death certificates.