'Was Lothar seen to go to the house?' Barney asked.
Verney shook his head. 'From nine o'clock on in the morning no one resembling him turned into the alley leading to the place; and, as he is Otto's twin, I was able to give Special Branch a pretty good description of him from that I obtained of Otto from Forsby. But, of course, he may have come up from the country on Friday and spent the night there, or perhaps his psychic faculties told him that Otto did not mean to play, so there was no point in his turning up himself.'
'While they were keeping observation did the police pick up anything fresh about the place?'
'Nothing. Apart from deliveries of food, it had the appearance all day of being deserted. Between nine and ten in the evening five cars arrived containing seven people, and a further twenty-one came to it on foot. From about four in the morning they began to leave and by six they had all dispersed. None of them appeared to have been drunk or could have been pulled in for any other reason; and, anyway, I'd given orders that, unless Lothar and Otto had both put in an appearance, nothing was to be done which would prematurely stir up this nest of vipers.'
After thinking for a moment, Barney said: 'It looks to me, Sir, as if Otto is true blue and means to dig his toes in; so how about trying to get him to act as a stool-pigeon? Seeing that he has such good cause to hate Lothar's guts, he might.'
C.B. smiled. 'Good mark to you, young feller, for thinking of it; but I've already cast that one out. In any ordinary case that line would be well worth trying, but in this it would be running too much of a risk. Otto might agree to play but, as Lothar is overlooking him, there is quite a chance that our enemy would tumble to what was going on. Once he realized that we are after him he might skip, and we don't want that. I think that, short of Forsby reporting some quite unexpected move, we'll continue to play it quietly for another week.'
To decrease the possibility of Mary - or Margot, as he knew her - becoming further involved with Ratnadatta, Barney would have liked to see the Satanist headquarters at Cremorne closed down without delay; but he appreciated that to raid it at any time other than when a meeting was being held there would be throwing away an opportunity to break up the circle much more effectively.
For a while they continued to discuss various aspects of the affair, then Barney finished his drink, excused himself, and drove to his rooms in Warwick Square to change out of his country clothes into things more suitable for attending a Communist social.
On the Tuesday Mary made similar preparations to those she had a fortnight before, then waited impatiently, through what seemed one of the longest evenings she had ever spent, for Barney to join her.
At last he arrived, smiling as usual. Within seconds of greeting him she asked anxiously: 'Did Ratnadatta speak to you about me? Was he very angry??
Barney gave her a shrewd look. 'You are frightened of him, aren't you? It makes me all the more glad that I prevented you from seeing him this evening. No; he didn't even mention you, although I managed to get him to myself for five minutes.'
As she led the way into the sitting-room, she enquired: 'How did you get on with him?'
'Not as well as I had hoped. I only prised him away with difficulty from an old trout smothered in rocks, and he was impatient to get back to her. It's pretty clear that he is out to get anyone with some special asset-money, position or beauty - into his net, and in my own case I was banking on my title to act as bait. I think it did to some extent, because he didn't actually turn me down. But I imagine that for the time being he's got his hands full with yourself and the female Croesus. I hinted that I thought the mediums I had seen at Mrs. Wardeel's a bit suspect, and understood that past-masters in Yoga could produce the real thing, then suggested that as he was an Indian he might perhaps know of compatriots living in London who were practitioners of the art.'
'And what did he say?'
'That he did not, as he had never interested himself in Yoga.'
Mary's glance wavered. 'How very strange!'
Barney's smile held no hint of accusation, and he replied: 'Not necessarily. He may not have thought me a good Yoga subject. He did say, though, that he was in touch with occultists who had passed a higher degree of initiation than any I was likely to meet at Mrs. Wardeel's, and that he might, perhaps, some time introduce me to some of them. But he thought that before we talked of the matter further, it would be a good thing if I acquired a better background knowledge of the occult by continuing to attend the lectures at Mrs. W.'s for another month or so.'
'I see; and do you intend to do that?'
'Certainly; if he insists on it. But, as I am pretty good at selling myself, I hope to persuade him to adopt a more forthcoming attitude next week. Let's forget all this now, though, and talk of something else. To be honest, too, I had no time to get a snack before going to the meeting, so I'm absolutely famished.'
The table was already laid. Glad to drop the subject, Mary told him to sit down at it, and hurried into her kitchenette. For a first course, as the weather had turned cold, she had heated up some tomato soup, to which she now added a good dollop of cream. As she did so she thought first how decent it was of Barney to have refrained from tackling her about Ratnadatta's having denied all knowledge of Yoga, and then of the way that the Indian had stalled him off.
She felt very glad that Ratnadatta had, otherwise he might have sounded Barney out over a dinner next Saturday then, perhaps, have taken him on to the Temple and given him a sight from the balcony of what went on there. A fortnight ago, with the idea of leading Barney to believe that she was a bold and sophisticated woman, she had started to tell him about what she had seen herself; only the spilling of the wine had caused her afterwards to insist that she had been fooling, and now she was very glad about that, because her attitude towards him had undergone a subtle change. She knew she would be ashamed if he found out that she really had let Ratnadatta take her to such a party and, instead of breaking with him, still refused to give any promise that she would not go with him to the Temple again.
But soon such thoughts were driven from her mind by Barney's gay, inconsequent chatter, as they tucked in to the good things she had provided for their supper and shared another bottle of the excellent Hock. Afterwards they sat down side by side on the sofa and she felt sure that, as she had kissed him on Saturday, this evening he would display no ultra chivalrous scruples about being in her flat, but soon start making love to her.
She had meant him to from the beginning and now, her original motive temporarily forgotten, she knew that she wanted him to. But, on a typical feminine impulse to postpone the moment a little longer, she lit a cigarette and asked: 'What was the lecture about this evening?'
'The Vedas,' he replied, 'and how Theosophy ties up with the sacred writings of the Hindus. I can't say that it gave me a yen to take up the study of Indian mythology as a hobby, but at least it made more sense than they gave
