The Devil Rides Out (45 page)

‘You have not seen him then today–this evening?'

‘No, I did not even know that he had returned to Paris.' There was a ring in the banker's voice which made it difficult for his questioners to doubt that he was telling them the truth.

‘Where does he live when he is in Paris?' the Duke enquired.

‘I do not know. I have visited him at many places. Often he stays with various friends, who are also interested in his practices, but he has no permanent address. The people with whom he was staying last left Paris some months ago for the Argentine, so I have no idea where you are likely to find him now.'

‘Where do you meet him when these Satanic gatherings take place?'

‘I am sorry but I can't tell you.' The Frenchman's voice was firm.

De Richleau padded softly forward and thrust the little pistol into Castelnau's ribs, just under his heart. ‘I am afraid you've got to,' he purred silkily. ‘The matter that we are engaged upon is urgent.'

The banker held his ground, and to outward appearances remained unruffled at the threat. ‘It is no good,' he said quietly, ‘I cannot do it, even if you intend to murder me. Each one of us goes into a self-induced hypnotic trance before proceeding to these meetings, and wakes upon his arrival. In my conscious state I have no idea how I get there; so this apache attitude of yours is completely useless.'

‘I see.' De Richleau nodded slowly and withdrew the automatic. ‘However, you are going to tell me just the same, because it happens that I am something of a hypnotist. I shall put you under now, and we shall proceed to follow all the stages of your unconscious journey.'

For the first time Castelnau's face showed a trace of fear.

‘You can't,' he muttered quickly. ‘I won't let you.'

De Richleau shrugged. ‘Your opposition will make it slightly more difficult, but I shall do it, nevertheless. However, as it may take some time, we will make fresh arrangements in order to ensure that we are not disturbed. Press the bell, and when your servant comes, give him definite
instructions that as we shall be engaged in a long conference, upon no pretext whatsoever are you to be disturbed.'

‘And if I refuse?' Castelnau's dark eyes suddenly flashed rebellion.

‘Then you will never live to give another order. The affair we are engaged upon is desperate, and whatever the consequences may be, I shall shoot you like the rat you are. Now ring.' De Richleau put the pistol in his pocket but still held the banker covered, and after a moment's hesitation Castelnau pressed the bell.

‘You, Richard,' the Duke said in a sharp whisper, ‘will leave us when the servant has taken his instructions. Wait for us with Marie Lou in the entrance hall. You have your gun. Prevent anyone leaving the apartment until we have finished. Open the door to anyone who rings yourself, and if Mocata arrives, as he may at any moment, don't argue–shoot. I take all responsibility.'

‘I am only waiting for the chance,' said Richard grimly, just as the servant entered.

Castelnau gave his orders in an even voice, with one eye upon the Duke's pocket, then Richard, in his normal voice, remarked casually:

‘Well, since the matter is confidential, I had better wait outside with my wife until you are through,' and followed the elderly alpaca-coated man out into the hall.

‘Rex,' De Richleau lost not an instant once the door was closed. ‘Take that telephone receiver off its stand so that we are not interrupted by any calls. And you,' he turned to the banker, ‘sit down in that chair.'

‘I won't!' exclaimed Castelnau furiously. ‘This is abominable. You invade my apartment like brigands. I give you such information as I can, but what you are about to do will bring me into danger, and I refuse–I refuse, I tell you.'

‘I shall neither argue with you nor kill you,' De Richleau answered frigidly. ‘You are too valuable to me alive. Rex, knock him out!'

Castelnau swung round and threw up his arms in a gesture of defence, but Rex broke through his guard. The young American's mighty fist caught him on the side of the jaw and he crumpled up, a still heap on his own hearth-rug.

When the banker came to he found himself sitting in a straight chair; his hands were lashed to the back and his ankles to the legs with the curtain cords. His head ached abominably and he saw De Richleau standing opposite to him, smiling relentlessly down into his face.

‘Now,' said the Duke, ‘look into my eyes. The sooner we get this business over the sooner you will be able to get to bed and nurse your sore head. I am about to place you under, and you are going to tell us what you do when you go to these Satanic meetings.'

Castelnau quickly closed his eyes and lowered his head on to his chest, resisting De Richleau's powerful suggestion with all the force of his will.

‘This doesn't look to me as though it's going to be any too easy,' Rex muttered dubiously. ‘I've always thought that it was impossible to hypnotise people if they were unwilling. You'd better let me put the half-Nelson on him until he becomes more amenable and sees reason.'

‘That might make him agree verbally,' De Richleau replied, ‘but it won't stop him lying to us afterwards, and it is quite possible to hypnotise people against their will. It is often done to lunatics in asylums. Get behind him
now, hold back his head and lift his eyelids with your fingers so that he cannot close them. We've got to find out about this place. It is our only hope of getting on to Mocata.'

Rex did as he was bid. The Duke stood before the chair, his steel-grey eyes fastened without a flicker upon those of the unwilling Satanist.

Time passed, and every now and then De Richleau's voice broke the silence of the quiet, dimly-lit room. ‘You are tired now, you will sleep. I command you.' But all his efforts were unavailing. The Satanist sat there rigid and determined not to succumb.

The ormolu clock upon the mantelpiece ticked with a steady, monotonous note, until Rex was filled with the mad desire to throw something at it. The hands crawled round the white enamelled dial; its silvery chime rang out, marking the hours eleven, twelve, one. Still the Frenchman endured De Richleau's steady gaze. He knew that they were expecting Mocata to arrive at his apartment. Mocata was immensely powerful. If only he could hold out until then the whole position might be saved. With a fixed determination not to give in, his eyelids held back by Rex's forefingers, he stared blankly at De Richleau's chin.

Outside, on the sofa of Cordova leather, Richard and Marie Lou sat side by side. It seemed to her again that she must be dreaming. The whole fantastic business of this flight to Paris and their dinner at the Vert Galant had been utterly unreal. It could not be real now that Mocata was somewhere in this city preparing to kill her darling Fleur in some ungodly rite, while she sat there with Richard in that strange, silent apartment and the night hours laboured on.

She thought that she slept a little, but she was not certain. Ever since she had fainted in the pentacle and come to with the sensation that she was above Cardinals Folly, floating in the soundless ether, all her movements had been automatic and her vision of their doings distorted, so that whole sections of time were blotted out from her mind, and only these glimpses of strange places and faces seemed to register.

The black-coated servant appeared once at the far end of the corridor, but seeing them still there, disappeared again.

Almost the whole of that long wait Richard sat with his eyes glued to the front door, his hand clasped ready on the pistol in his pocket, expecting the ring that would announce Mocata's arrival.

He too felt that somehow this person, grown desperate from an unbearable injury and lusting with the desire to kill, regardless of laws and consequences, could not possibly be himself. With every movement that he made he expected to wake and find himself safely in bed at Cardinals Folly, with Marie Lou snuggled down close against him and Fleur peacefully asleep only a few doors away.

Had he wholly believed that Fleur had been taken from him and that he was never to see her again, he could not possibly have endured those dreary hours of enforced idleness while the Duke battled with Castelnau. He would have been forced to interrupt them or at least leave his post to watch their proceedings, for his inactivity would have become unbearable.

In the richly furnished
salon
, Rex and the Duke continued their long-sustained effort without a second's intermission. The clock struck two, and as Rex stood behind the Frenchman's chair, shifting his weight from foot to foot now and then, he seemed at times to drop off into a sort of
half-sleep where he stood.

At last, a little after two, he was roused to a fresh attention by a sudden sob breaking from the dry lips of the banker.

‘I will not let you, I will not,' he cried hysterically, and then began to struggle violently with the curtain cords that tied him to the chair.

‘You will,' De Richleau told him firmly, the pupils of his grey eyes now distended and gleaming with an unnatural light.

Castelnau suddenly ceased to struggle; a cold sweat broke out on his bony forehead, and his head sagged on his neck, but Rex held it firmly and continued to press back his eyelids so that it was impossible for him to escape the Duke's relentless stare.

He began to sob then, like a child who is being beaten, and at last De Richleau knew that he had broken the Frenchman's will. In another ten minutes Rex was able to remove his fingers from the banker's eyelids for he no longer had the power to close them, but sat there gazing at De Richleau with an imbecile glare.

In a low voice the Duke began to question him and, after one last feeble effort at resistance, it all came out. The meeting place was in a cellar below a deserted warehouse on the banks of the Seine at Asnières. They secured full directions as to the way to reach it and how to get into it when they arrived.

As Castelnau answered the last question, De Richleau glanced at the clock. ‘Three and a quarter hours,' he said with a sigh of weariness. ‘Still, it might well have taken longer in a case like this.'

‘What'll we do with him?' Rex motioned towards the Frenchman who, with his head fallen forward on his chest, was now sound asleep.

‘Leave him there,' answered the Duke abruptly. ‘The servants will find him in the morning, and he's so exhausted that he will sleep until then. But stuff your handkerchief in his mouth just in case he wakes and tries to make any trouble for us. Be quick!'

Castelnau did not even blink an eyelid as Rex gagged him. They left him there and hurried out to the others.

‘Come on!' cried the Duke.

‘What about Mocata?' Richard asked. ‘If we leave here we may miss him.'

‘We must chance that.' De Richleau pulled open the door and made for the stairs.

As they dashed down the long flights he flung over his shoulder: ‘Tanith may have been wrong. Messages from the Astral plane are often unreliable about time. As it does not exist there, they have difficulty in judging it. She may have seen him here a week hence or in the past even. It's so late now that I doubt if he will turn up tonight. Anyhow, we got out of Castelnau the place where he's most likely to be–and God knows what he may be doing if he is there. We've got to hurry!' They fled after him out of the silent building.

Round the corner they managed to pick up a taxi and, at the promise of a big tip, the man got every ounce out of his engine as he whirled the four harassed-looking people away through the murky streets up towards the Boulevard de Clichy. Topping the hill, they descended again towards the Seine, crossed the river and entered Asnières.

In that outlying slum of Paris with its wharves and warehouses, narrow, sordid-looking streets and dimly-lit passages, there was little movement at that hour of the morning. They paid off the taxi outside a closed café which faced upon a dirty-looking square. A market wagon rumbled past with its
driver huddled on the seat above the horses, his cape drawn close to protect him from the damp mist rising from the river. The bedraggled figure of a woman was huddled upon the steps of a shop with ‘Tabac' in faded blue letters above it, but otherwise there was no sign of life.

Turning up the collars of their coats and shivering afresh from the damp chill of the drifting fog, they followed the Duke's lead along an evil-looking street of tumbledown dwelling houses. Then, between two high walls, along a narrow passage where the rays of a solitary lamp, struggling through grimy glass, were barely sufficient to dispel a small circle of gloom in its own area. When they had passed it the rest was darkness, foul smells, greasy mud squishing from beneath their feet, and wisps of mist curling cold about their faces.

At the end of that long dark alley-way they came out upon a deserted wharf. De Richleau turned to the left and the others followed. To one side of them the steep face of a tall brick building, from which chains and pulleys hung in slack festoons, towered up into the darkness. On the other, a few feet away, the river surged, oily, turgid, yellow and horrible as it hurried to the sea.

As if in a fresh phase of their nightmare, they stumbled forward over planks, hawsers and pieces of old iron, the neglected debris of the riverside, until fifty yards farther, De Richleau halted.

‘This is it,' he announced, fumbling with a rusty padlock. ‘Castelnau hadn't got a key and so we'll have to break this thing. Hunt around, and see if you can find a piece of iron that we can use as a jemmy. The longer the better. It will give us more purchase.'

They rummaged round in the semi-darkness, broken only by a riverside light some distance away along the wharf and the masthead lanterns of a few long barges anchored out on the swiftly flowing waters.

‘This do?' Richard pulled a rusty lever from a winch and, grabbing it from him, the Duke thrust the narrow end into the hoop of the padlock.