Ram must have mistaken him for someone else.'
Wash gave an ugly laugh. 'The Great Ram doesn't make mistakes, honey. Could be you're right about his coming from Kenya. If so, his tie-up with the police here is only temporary. Bui if the Great Ram says he's a spy, a spy he is. Had we the time we'd put him under hypnosis and get details about his assignment. As things are tonight we're working on too tight a schedule. Just have to bump him and get on with our own business.'
'You can't!' Mary cried in protest. 'You can't. Not without giving him some form of trial. At least you must give him a chance to show that this is all a terrible mistake.'
'Having liked the guy it's natural you should see things that way.' Wash put his big hand on her knee and gave it a friendly squeeze. 'I guess, too, maybe you'd been countin' on him making h you his Duchess or something; so him turning out a rat is a bad break for you. Still, none of us can expect the little old ivories to roll as we want all the time, and now you're my squaw I'll see you lack for nothing. At this point, though, I'll warn. When your Lord Larne is about to get his, no throwing a scene. The Great Ram wouldn't take that kindly, and it might make things mighty awkward for us both.'
For a few minutes Mary remained silent while the car sped on through the dark night, then she asked, 'Where are we going?'
'To the ruined Abbey I was telling you of last night. Place where I dumped the body of that floosie down the well.'
Mary shuddered. 'To ... to hold a Sabbat in such a place must be very different from holding one in the Temple at Cremorne.'
They've one thing in common: altars once used for Christian rites. That's a must in Christian countries. Leastways, they give ten times the potency to the conjurations of a priest of Our Lord Satan.
'I see. But after the ceremony? Surely it's too cold and uncomfortable for anyone to enjoy feasting, and that sort of thing, in an old ruin?'
He laughed. 'You'll not find it cold, honey. To alter temperature within a radius of a hundred yards is a simple magic. I create a fog belt round the ruin as a precaution against passing casuals seeing our lights from the road and getting a mind to snoop. Then I call off the rain - if need be - and ante-up the heat inside the magic circle to a degree that's pleasant.'
Having witnessed the Great Ram perform more astonishing miracles, Mary accepted without question Wash's claim to control local weather conditions by magic, but she said, 'All the same, unless you can turn slabs of stone into divans, and the hard ground into a carpet, there can't be much fun in holding an orgy there.'
'We don't; not in the ruin. I've rented a house not far off that's got all the etceteras. Once a month we adjourn there after the ceremony. There's no women initiates in this little Lodge I've founded for my boys. I get out from Cambridge a picked bunch of dolls for them to hit it up with. The dolls are not wise to what goes on beforehand in the Abbey. They're just invited to a party where there'll be prizes for the hottest momma, and paid off in the morning.'
'Shall we be going there to-night??
'No. We've only to do the rituals, perform the sacrifice and initiate you; then we beat it just as fast as we can.'
'Does that mean that I'll have to ... to do my Temple Service in the ruin?'
'Yeah. You'll have to take it on the altar stone, honey. And for once in my life I'll be jealous. You've sure got under my skin. I'll just hate the others even eyeing you on the stone, let alone what'll follow.'
'I ... Wash; listen!' she burst out. 'I'm going to hate it, too, now I know you feel like that about me. And as long as you do I'd be content to remain a neophyte. You can give me everything I want without my becoming a witch. Let's postpone my initiation. You can drop me somewhere before we get to the Abbey and I'll wait on the roadside until you are through with your rituals and can pick me up again.'
With her pulses racing she waited breathlessly for his reply. If he agreed, not only would she escape the dreaded ordeal of initiation but, infinitely more important, she would have a chance to get to a telephone and bring the police on the scene before they could murder Barney.
'That's mighty handsome of you, honey,' he said softly. 'You must care quite a lot about old Wash to offer to forgo this chance to acquire power, so as to spare him the sight of you playing the part of a push-over. I'd give a packet to be able to take you up on your offer.'
'But you can! Why shouldn't you?'
He shook his head. 'No dice, honey. I could have if the Great Ram wasn't in on this party. But he is; and he's offered to initiate you himself. That's one hell of an honour. To turn it down just isn't possible; and the initiation wouldn't make sense unless you do your stuff in the Creation rite. If you tried to stall now he'd maybe think it was because you couldn't take our giving Doctor Dee the works, and meant to apostasize. Then he'd send out a curse that would blast you where you stood.'
With a sigh Mary lay back and closed her eyes. Her brief hope had been dashed and it now seemed that nothing short of a miracle could save Barney's life. Silently but fervently she began to pray to the Holy Virgin to intercede for him.
Barney's thoughts, meanwhile, were almost equally chaotic. Being completely unaware of the peril which threatened to bring his existence to an abrupt termination in the very near future, the idea of trying to get away from his sinister companion never entered his mind; it was filled with a jumble of speculations which shuttled swiftly to and fro between the man beside him and Mary. To him it seemed a marvellous piece of luck that while seeking for Mary down here in the country he should have stumbled on Lothar. Although an Irishman, Barney had the quality of an English bulldog and, having made contact with the Satanist whom his chief was so anxious to lay by the heels, nothing could have induced him to let go. To him it was now only a question of how best to secure Lothar's arrest. Yet he found it exceedingly difficult to concentrate on the problem because Mary's enraged face and furious denunciation of him persistently rose up in his mind.
The revelation that she was the Mary McCreedy of his salad days had left him temporarily stunned. He could not think now how he had failed to recognize her; she had made it clear enough that she had recognized him. But why had she not revealed the fact, and given him a chance to explain?
He wondered then, a shade uneasily, what explanation he could have given, except that on coming into his title his uncle had insisted on his changing his whole way of life. But evidently she believed that he had invented his title, and that was hardly surprising in view of the lies he had told her about his having spent most of his life in Kenya.
