power of the Great Ram. Ratnadatta's, although far less, might still be formidable. But she could say she had been ill and, if he had not actually been overlooking her at the time, how could he be certain that she was lying? The fact that Barney would be there, somewhere in the offing, to stand by her, finally outweighed her fears, and she said:
'All right, then. I won't go on Tuesday. But come to supper again afterwards and tell me how the meeting went.'
To that he cheerfully agreed and, a quarter-of-an-hour later, he set her down with a smiling farewell in Cromwell Road.
Before going to the subscription concert, Barney had another date to keep. It was with C.B. at a small hotel in Chelsea to which the Colonel sometimes asked his young men to come if he wished to see them on a Sunday and did not want to go up to the office.
At their last meeting on Friday, after it had emerged that Lothar was pressing Otto to keep an appointment with him at the old house in Cremorne, they had gone very thoroughly into the implications of this unexpected link between the twin of the scientist down in Wales and Ratnadatta's circle.
Up to the point of that discovery, while reading Otto Khune's statement, Barney had been strongly of the impression that the scientist had become the victim of hallucinations; but he had described the old mansion with such unmistakable clearness that, short of the whole document being an apparently pointless fraud, it seemed that a vision of it really must have been conveyed to him by psychic means.
C.B., who knew much more about such matters, had also pointed out that, according to the statement, the twins had been gifted from childhood with supernatural powers, and many times in their lives each had used those powers to inform himself about the situation of the other. Moreover Lothar, in whom the power was evidently greater, having used it with such vicious unscrupulousness to wreck his brother's marriage, obviously had an intensely evil personality; so, his turning out to be a Satanist was not particularly surprising.
The passages in Otto's statement describing his meeting with Lothar in 1950 made it clear that the latter was working for the Russians. The purpose of his visit to London then had been to induce Otto to return to Russia with him; his purpose now was, obviously, to tickle Otto's vanity with the prospect of securing data which would give him new triumphs in his own scientific field, then to trick him in the exchange and make off with the formula of Britain's latest rocket fuel. In any case, there could be little doubt that he was acting as a Communist agent.
The fact that he was both a Communist and a Satanist had raised the interesting question of how far might a tie-up exist between these two supposedly separate forces for evil? It could be that Lothar was using the old mansion in Cremorne from time to time simply as a guest. Satanism, as Verney knew, was world wide, and Black Magic still practised in every country under the sun; so Lothar could have secured an introduction from a Satanic circle to which he belonged abroad to the circle in London. If so, it did not follow that his hosts knew him to be a Soviet agent, or even that he was a Communist, and they themselves might play no part in Communist activities.
But Verney had told Barney that he regarded that as most unlikely. From the beginning he had believed that Teddy Morden had died as the victim of a human sacrifice to Satan. There was no factual evidence that he had ever gone to the mansion in Cremorne but the circumstantial evidence that he had done so was too strong not to be accepted. Not only had the nightmares that had afflicted Morden for several weeks before his death been of a nature to indicate very strongly that he was attending Black Magic ceremonies, but during them he had also several times mentioned an Indian. They knew Morden to have been a regular attendant at Mrs. Wardeel's as, too, was Ratnadatta; and Barney had established the fact that the Indian was a link between her Theosophist circle and the Satanist circle at Cremorne, so it now seemed as good as certain that Ratnadatta had taken Morden there. But why should the Satanists have murdered him? His mission had had nothing to do with occultism of any kind. It had been the very down-to-earth business of finding out the ramifications of the Communist campaign to sabotage British industry. Yet it must have been something to do with that which had led him to Mrs. Wardeel's and to cultivate Ratnadatta; and, later, the discovery of what Morden was up to that had led to his death.
If that was so, it followed that Lothar was not making use of the house at Cremorne just because he had the entree to it as a Satanist; it must be because the Satanic circle there was hand-in-glove with the Communists.
To have reached this conclusion was most satisfactory to C.B. and Barney, as they felt that it gave them an excellent chance of killing two evil birds with one stone. But the problem remained of how best to arrange matters so as to get the maximum number of this devilish crew in the bag at one fell swoop.
Apparently Lothar came to the house at Cremorne only on Saturdays, so to raid the place on any other day would leave him at large. It was, too, on Saturday nights that the Satanist circle gathered there, so there was good reason to believe that he came up from some hide-out on that day to be present at their weekly celebration. If, therefore, Special Branch surrounded the place the following evening and raided it about eleven o'clock, they should get him in the net with his associates.
Against such a proceeding there was one snag. The law of England was cumbersome and, owing to its proper concern with protecting the rights of the individual, often made the task of the Security Services extremely difficult. Even should the Satanists be caught naked in the midst of an orgy, whoever owned the place, or was its legal tenant, could be charged only with using it for immoral purposes, and those caught in it with indecent behaviour. Lothar, if it transpired that he was accredited to the Soviet Embassy, might plead diplomatic privilege, and so escape scot-free.
On the other hand, if Otto had called on him there earlier in the day, it would be a very different matter. Once the brothers had actually met, .even if Lothar was not caught with British scientific data on him, the tape recordings Forsby had secured, which gave the reason for their meeting, could be used to incriminate them.
In consequence, Verney had decided to have the house at Cremorne watched in case Otto gave way and came to the rendezvous next day. If he did, the place was to be raided that night. If not, they would hold their hands till next Saturday, then repeat the drill.
C.B. had then told Barney that he had to be out of London on other business for the next two nights, so would not be able to let him know what had happened till Sunday, and made an appointment for them to have a drink together that evening.
Barney found his Colonel in a snug little parlour at the back of the hotel and, having been provided with a drink, eagerly enquired what had taken place at Cremorne the previous day.
'No luck, partner,' C.B. replied at once. 'As a matter of fact I had no great expectations anyway. Lothar gave Otto the choice of two Saturdays and it's only natural that anyone under pressure should postpone the issue up till the last moment. It's quite on the cards that he won't give way at all or, if he does come up next Saturday, it will be with the intention of murdering Lothar. But if he doesn't, Lothar won't leave it at that. You can bet on it that rather than go back to Russia empty handed he'll make some other move; and the more desperate he gets, the better chance we'll have of pulling him in red-handed.'
