The Devil Rides Out (25 page)

‘Has he?' Richard put her down. ‘Poor Jim. We must see about this.

‘He's hurted bad,' Fleur went on, tugging impulsively at her mother's skirt. ‘He's cutted hisself on his magic sword.'

‘Dear me,' Marie Lou ran her fingers through Fleur's dark curls. She knew that by ‘magic sword' Fleur meant the gardener's scythe, for Richard always insisted that the lawn at Cardinals Folly was too old and too fine to be ruined by a mowing machine, and maintained the ancient practice of having
it scythe-cut. ‘Where is he now, my sweet?'

‘Nanny binded him up and I helped a lot. Then he went to the kitchen.'

‘And you weren't frightened of the blood?' Richard asked with interest.

Fleur shook her curly head. ‘No. Fleur's not to be frightened of anyfink, Mummy says. Why would I be frightened of the blug?'

‘Silly people are sometimes,' her father replied. ‘But not people who know things like Mummy and you and I.'

At that moment Fleur's nurse joined them. She had heard the last part of the conversation. ‘It's nothing serious, madam,' she assured Marie Lou. ‘Jim was sharpening his scythe and the hone slipped, but he only cut his finger.'

‘But fink if he can't work,' Fleur interjected in a high treble.

‘Why?' asked her father gravely.

‘He's poor,' announced the child after a solemn interval for deep thought. ‘He has to work to keep his children. So if he can't work, he'll be in a muddle–won't he?'

Richard and Marie Lou exchanged a smiling glance as Simon's expression for any sort of trouble came so glibly to the child's lips.

‘Yes, that's a serious matter,' her father agreed gravely. ‘What are we going to do about it?'

‘We mus' all give him somefink,' Fleur announced breathlessly.

‘Well, say I give him half-a-crown,' Richard suggested. ‘How much do you think you can afford?'

‘I'll give half-a-cwown too.' Fleur was nothing if not generous.

‘But have you got it, Batuskha?' inquired her mother.

Fleur thought for a bit, and then said doubtfully: ‘P'r'aps I haven't. So I'll give him a ha'penny instead.'

‘That's splendid, darling, and I'll contribute a shilling,' Marie Lou declared. ‘That makes three shillings and sixpence halfpenny altogether, doesn't it?'

‘But Nanny must give somefink,' declared Fleur suddenly turning on her nurse, who smiling said that she thought she could manage fourpence.

‘There,' laughed Richard. ‘Three and tenpence halfpenny! He'll be a rich man for life, won't he? Now you had better toddle in to lunch.'

This domestic crisis having been satisfactorily settled, Richard and Marie Lou strolled along beneath the balustraded terrace, past the low branches of the old cedar, and so to the hot-houses. Their butler, Malin, had just arrived with sugar and fresh cream, and for half an hour they made a merry meal of the early strawberries.

They had hardly finished when, to their surprise, since it was barely two o'clock, Malin returned to announce the arrival of their guests.

‘There they are,' cried Marie Lou, as the three friends came out from the tall windows of the drawing-room on to the terrace. ‘But, darling, look at Simon–they
have
gone mad.'

Well might the Eatons think so from Simon's grotesque appearance in shorts, and the absurd mauve and orange cricketing cap. Hurried greetings were soon exchanged and the whole party went back into the drawing-room.

‘Greyeyes, darling,' Marie Lou exclaimed as she stood on tiptoe again to
kiss De Richleau's lean cheek. ‘We had your telegram and we are dying to know what it's all about. Have our servants conspired to poison us or what?'

‘
What,
' smiled De Richleau. ‘Definitely
what,
Princess. We have a very strange story to tell you, and I was most anxious you should avoid eating any meat for today at all events.'

Richard moved towards the bell. ‘Well, we're not debarred from a glass of your favourite sherry, I trust.'

The Duke held up a restraining hand. ‘I'm afraid we are. None of us must touch alcohol under any circumstances at present.'

‘Good God!' Richard exclaimed. ‘You don't mean that–you can't. You
have
gone crazy!'

‘I do,' the Duke assured him with a smile. ‘Quite seriously.'

‘We're in a muddle–a nasty muddle,' Simon added with a twisted grin.

‘So it appears,' Richard laughed, a trifle uneasily. He was quite staggered by the strange appearance of his friends, the tense electric atmosphere which they had brought into the house with them, and the unnatural way in which they stood about–speaking only in short jerky sentences.

He glanced at Rex, usually so full of gaiety, standing huge, gloomy and silent near the door, then he turned suddenly back to the Duke and demanded: ‘What
is
Simon doing in that absurd get-up? If it was the right season for it I should imagine that he was competing for the fool's prize at the Three Arts' Ball.'

‘I can quite understand your amazement,' the Duke replied quietly, ‘but the truth is that Simon has been very seriously bewitched.'

‘It is obvious that something's happened to him,' agreed Richard curtly. ‘But don't you think it would be better to stop fooling and tell us just what all this nonsense
is
about?'

‘I mean it,' the Duke insisted. ‘He was sufficiently ill advised to start dabbling in Black Magic a few months ago, and it's only by the mercy of Providence that Rex and I were enabled to step in at a critical juncture with some hope of arresting the evil effects.'

Richard's brown eyes held the Duke's grey ones steadily. ‘Look here,' he said, ‘I am far too fond of you ever to be rude intentionally, but hasn't this joke gone far enough? To talk about magic in the twentieth century is absurd.'

‘All right. Call it natural science then.' De Richleau leaned a little wearily against the mantelpiece. ‘Magic is only a name for the sciences of causing change to occur in conformity with will.'

‘Or by setting natural laws in action quite inadvertently,' added Marie Lou, to everyone's surprise.

‘Certainly,' the Duke agreed after a moment, ‘and Richard has practised that type of magic himself.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?' Richard exclaimed.

De Richleau shrugged. ‘Didn't you tell me that you got a Diviner down from London when you were so terribly short of water here last summer, and that when you took his hazel twig you found out that you could locate an underground spring in the garden without his help?'

‘Yes,' Richard hesitated. ‘That's true, and as a matter of fact I've been successful in finding places where people could sink wells on several estates in the neighbourhood since. But surely that has something to do with electricity? It's not magic'

‘If you were to say vibrations, you would be nearer the mark,' De Richleau replied seriously. ‘It is an attunement of certain little-understood vibrations between the water under the ground and something in yourself which makes the forked hazel twig suddenly begin to jump and revolve in your hands when you walk over a hidden spring. That is undoubtedly a demonstration of the lesser kind of magic.'

‘The miracle of Moses striking the rock in the desert from which the waters gushed forth is only another example of the same thing,' Simon cut in.

Marie Lou was watching the Duke's face with grave interest. ‘Everyone knows there is such a thing as magic,' she declared, ‘and witchcraft. During those years that I lived in a little village on the borders of the Siberian Forest I saw many strange things, and the peasants went in fear and trembling of one old woman who lived in a cottage all alone outside the village. But what do you mean by lesser magic?'

‘There are two kinds,' De Richleau informed her. ‘The lesser is performing certain operations which you believe will bring about a certain result without knowing why it should be so. If you chalk a line on the floor and take an ordinary hen, hold its beak down for a little time on to the line and then release it, the hen will remain there motionless with its head bent down to the floor. The assumption is that, being such a stupid creature, it believes that it has been tied down to the line and it is therefore useless to endeavour to escape. But nobody knows for certain. All we do know is that it happens. That is a fair example of an operation in minor magic. The great majority of the lesser witches and wizards in the past had no conception as to
why
their spells worked, but had learned from their predecessors that if they performed a given operation a certain result was almost sure to follow it.'

Rex looked up suddenly and spoke for the first time. ‘I'd say they were pretty expert at playing on the belief of the credulous by peddling a sort of inverted Christian Science, faith healing, Coueism and all that as well.'

‘Of course,' De Richleau smiled faintly. ‘But they were far too clever to tell a customer straight out that if he concentrated sufficiently on his objective he would probably achieve it–even if they realised that themselves. Instead, they followed the old formulas which compelled him to develop his will power. If a man is in love with a girl and is told that he will get her if he rises from his bed at seven minutes past two every night for a month, gathers half a dozen flowers from a new-made grave in the local churchyard and places them in a spot where the girl will walk over them the following day, he does not get much chance to slacken in his desire and we all know that persistence can often work wonders.'

‘Perhaps,' Richard agreed with mild cynicism. ‘But would you have us believe that Simon is seeking the favour of a lady by wandering about in this lunatic get-up?'

‘No, there is also the greater magic which is only practised by learned students of the Art who go through long courses of preparation and initiation, after which they understand not only that certain apparently inexplicable results are brought about by a given series of actions, but the actual reason why this should be so. Such people are powerful and dangerous in the extreme, and it is into the hands of one of these that our poor friend has fallen.'

Richard nodded, realising at last that the Duke was perfectly serious in his statement. ‘This seems a most extraordinary affair,' he commented. ‘I think you'd better start from the beginning and give us the whole story.'

‘All right. Let's sit down. If you doubt any of the statements that I am about to make, Rex will guarantee the facts and vouch for my sanity.'

‘I certainly will,' Rex agreed with a sombre smile.

De Richleau then told the Eatons all that had taken place in the last forty-eight hours, and asked quite solemnly if they were prepared to receive Simon, Rex and himself under their roof in spite of the fact that it might involve some risk to themselves.

‘Of course,' Marie Lou said at once. ‘We would not dream of your going away. You must stay just as long as you like and until you are quite certain that Simon is absolutely out of danger.'

Richard, sceptical still, but devoted to his friends whatever their apparent folly, nodded his agreement as he slipped an arm through his wife's. ‘Certainly you must stay. And,' he added generously without the shadow of a smile, ‘tell us exactly how we can help you best.'

‘It's awfully decent of you,' Simon hazarded with a ghostly flicker of his wide-mouthed grin. ‘But I'll never forgive myself if any harm comes to you from it.'

‘Don't let's have that all over again,' Rex begged. ‘We argued it long enough in the car on the way here, and De Richleau's assured you time and again that no harm will come to Richard and Marie Lou providing we take reasonable precautions.'

‘That is so,' the Duke nodded. ‘And your help will be invaluable. You see, Simon's resistance is practically nil owing to his having been under Mocata's influence for so long, and Rex and I are at a pretty low ebb after last night. We need every atom of vitality which we can get to protect him, and your coming fresh into the battle should turn the scale in our favour. What we should have done if you had thrown us out I can't think, because I know of no one else who wouldn't have considered us all to be raving lunatics.'

Richard laughed. ‘My dear fellow, how can you even suggest such a thing? You would still be welcome here if you'd committed murder.'

‘I may have to before long,' De Richleau commented soberly. ‘The risk to myself is a bagatelle compared to the horrors which may overwhelm the world if Mocata succeeds in getting possession of the Talisman–but I won't involve you in that of course.'

‘This Sabbat you saw …' Richard hazarded after a moment ‘Don't think I'm doubting your account of it, but isn't it just possible that your eyes deceived you in the darkness? I mean about the Satanic part. Everyone knows that Sabbats took place all over England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But it is generally accepted now that they were only an excuse for a bit of a blind and a sexual orgy. Are you sure that it was not a revival of that sort of thing staged by a group of wealthy decadents?'

‘Not on your life,' Rex declared with a sudden shiver. ‘I've never been scared all that bad before and, believe you me, it was the real business.'

‘What do you wish us to do, Greyeyes dear?' Marie Lou asked the Duke.

He hoisted himself slowly out of the chair into which he had sunk. ‘I must drive to Oxford. An old Catholic priest whom I know lives there and I am going to try and persuade him to entrust me with a portion of the Blessed Host. If he will, that is the most perfect of all protections which we could have to keep with us through the night. In the meantime, I want the rest of you to look after Simon.' He smiled affectionately in Simon's direction. ‘You must forgive me treating you like a child for the moment, my dear boy, but I don't want the others to let you out of their sight until I return.'