Instantly her joy at knowing friends to be so near was changed to awful apprehension, for it seemed clear that he had already planned to use some form of his evil power for their destruction. Yet he uttered no curse and made no gesture.
Suddenly there came a bright flash, a tongue of flame leapt skywards, and a moment later the roar of the explosion followed to echo and echo back and forth across the valley. Where the engine house had stood there was now a dense cloud of smoke and from it came up thinly the cries of the injured and the dying.
In Mary horror temporarily drove out fear. Swinging round she faced the Great Ram and screamed at him, 'You fiend! You fiend! May Heaven blast you for this murder!'
At that moment, had she had the bread knife with her she would have tried to kill him; but he had come for her so unexpectedly that she had had to leave it hidden under the blanket of her bunk. His only reaction was a scornful laugh, followed by a glance that instantly quelled her and forced her to lower her gaze.
'Come now,' he said abruptly. 'I have work to do, and you shall see me do it. Since you have shown yourself to be one of those who follow the pathetic slave religion started by the imposter Christ, it pleases me that you should hear me announce the death knell of Christianity. If He had the power to preserve it, He obviously would, but He has not; and I intend to show those among His followers who may survive how ill-placed their faith in this self- styled 'Saviour of the World' has been. Go in now. You know the wireless cabin. Wait for me there while I watch for a little longer the consternation of those puny creatures down in the valley.'
She knew she must obey him, yet she still had a kick left in her and as she turned to re-enter the cave she burst out, 'You've wrecked the railway, but you've only killed a few of them. And it's certain that with those tanks there are mountain troops. They'll climb up here. For every one you kill they'll call up a dozen reinforcements. You've left it too late to escape. They are bound to get you.'
He tossed his head with the old arrogant gesture. 'Little fool, your persistent blindness to my power becomes almost amusing. Mirkoss and the Chinese I had to send away, otherwise they would have been trapped. But I, the Great Ram, am not as other men. When I will I can call down the cloud to hide the entrances to this cave and halt the climbers, unless they are prepared to risk death with every step they take. The cloud, though, will form no barrier to my sight, and I have long since learned to levitate myself; so I can pass over crevasses that no guide would attempt to cross. I am also impervious to cold; so I shall go upward and make my way unchallenged over the range into another valley where I have already made preparations for my reception.'
To that she could make no reply. It was clear that he had thought of everything. Stumbling a little, she made her way to the wireless cabin and threw herself into a chair there.
The thought that now obsessed her was that Barney might have been with Colonel Verney in the engine-house when it had blown up. She was past tears, but her very heart-strings were wrung with the visual image of her gay, laughter-loving Barney as a broken, twisted body being carried on a stretcher from that still-smoking ruin down in the valley. Her belief that he despised her made no difference to her love for him. And since she had realized, from what Wash had told her, that he must be one of Colonel Verney's young men, although she could not begin to account for such a strange metamorphosis, her love for him, instead of being only an unreasoning passion, had been sanctified by respect and admiration.
For what seemed a long time she sat crouched, wringing her hands, in the wireless cabin. It drifted through her mind that, by ripping at the wires and bending the terminals, she might put the set out of action. But a moment's thought told her that whether he made his proposed broadcast to the world or not did not matter in the least, as that had no bearing on his ability to launch the rocket.
At last he joined her. Waving her from the chair, he sat down in it and began to fiddle with the apparatus. She stood in the doorway, no longer feeling a compulsion to remain with him, but too mentally exhausted to make the effort necessary to break away.
He spent a good ten minutes tuning in to the wave length he required, then began to speak in what she imagined to be Russian. That he should have wished her to remain to hear him she now guessed to be due to his inordinate vanity's demanding the presence of an audience, however humble or unable to appreciate what he was saying, to witness this epoch-making declaration he was making to the world.
Actually he was telling the Russians that their leaders had betrayed the masses by abandoning the Marxist faith of equality achieved through violence, and had become money-grubbing bourgeois intellectuals. He announced the imminent destruction of the regime - although he made no mention of his rocket or the way in which he meant to bring that about - and told the Russians that those who survived the purge he meant to initiate would be given a new chance to be a law unto themselves and enjoy to the utmost all the pleasures this world had to offer. He then went on to talk of himself and the part that, under Satan, he would play in the New Order that was to emerge from the Old.
Although Mary could not understand one word he said, she felt sure that from his arrogant, ranting tone - which reminded her vaguely of the broadcasts she had heard when a child, made by Hitler - anyone who was listening to him would take him for a madman. That he was mad she now had no doubt, but that did not make him any the less dangerous.
Abruptly he ceased his tirade and again spent some minutes tuning in to a wave length that he evidently considered the best on which to convey his message to the United States and Britain.
He announced himself clearly as Professor Lothar Khune addressing the English-speaking world. To hold the attention of listeners who had chanced to hear him he added that most of them would be dead before the day was out. His theme then was that the Christian heresy had inflicted on the world many generations of senseless self- denial, made an unnatural virtue of celibacy, and denied the people the joy in life which was their birthright; that to bring about a reversal of this unhappy state of things it was necessary for him, Lothar Khune, to act with complete ruthless-ness. To destroy the Christian Church root and branch he must also do away with the established governments that supported it. He went on to state that, as they could read in their Bibles, God had given Prince Lucifer this world as His Province. Then he declared that Satan had become weary of the disloyalty of his subjects, so intended to punish them through his servant, Lothar Khune, with a great affliction; but those who survived might look forward to a new era of true freedom and happiness. Finally he declared that on behalf of His Lord Satan he intended to initiate the beginning of the New Era this very day at twelve noon precisely.
Chilled to the heart, Mary heard him out. She knew that almost everyone who had listened to his broadcasts would regard him as a harmless lunatic. But he was not. That he had made them could be due only to a childish vanity - the urge to let people know that it was he, Lothar Khune, who had decreed death for millions and an end to all existing institutions. But he was no mentally ill-adjusted adolescent or madman who did not know what he was doing. He meant every word he said and, short of a miracle, at midday he would launch his rocket.
So pleased was he with himself in his role as arbiter of the fate of the world that, having concluded his broadcast, he turned and actually smiled at Mary. As she quickly averted her eyes, he said: 'Twelve noon. That is the time I had already decided upon and I shall not have to advance it by one minute, although by now everything the governments of Europe and America can do against me is being done. The Alpine troops may burst their hearts
