of normal trivial life had been lifted. Behind it was the real woman, displaying something of the manner of a surgeon approaching the operating table for a difficult and dangerous operation. This impression was heightened when she went to a cupboard in the wall and took from it what appeared to be a kind of long overall. It seemed to be made, when the light caught it, of some metallic woven tissue. She drew on long gauntlets of what looked like a kind of fine mesh rather resembling a bullet-proof vest I had once been shown.
'One has to take precautions,' she said.
The phrase struck me as slightly sinister.
Then she addressed me in an emphatic deep voice.
'I must impress upon you, Mr Easterbrook, the necessity of remaining absolutely still where you are. On no account must you move from that chair. It might not be safe to do so. This is no child's game. I am dealing with forces that are dangerous to those who do not know how to handle them!' She paused and then asked, 'You have brought what you were instructed to bring?'
Without a word, I drew from my pocket a brown suede glove and handed it to her.
She took it and moved over to a metal lamp with a gooseneck shade. She switched on the lamp and held the glove under its rays which were of a peculiar sickly colour, turning the glove from its rich brown to a characterless grey.
She switched off the lamp, nodding in approval.
'Most suitable,' she said. 'The physical emanations from its wearer are quite strong.'
She put it down on top of what appeared to be a large radio cabinet at the end of the room. Then she raised her voice a little. 'Bella. Sybil. We are ready.'
Sybil came in first. She wore a long black cloak over her peacock dress. This she flung aside with a dramatic gesture. It slid down, looking like an inky pool on the floor. She came forward.
'I do hope it will be all right,' she said. 'One never knows. Please don't adopt a sceptical frame of mind, Mr Easterbrook. It does so hinder things.'
'Mr Easterbrook has not come here to mock,' said Thyrza.
There was a certain grimness in her tone.
Sybil lay down on the purple divan. Thyrza bent over her, arranging her draperies.
'Quite comfortable?' she asked solicitously.
'Yes, thank you, dear.'
Thyrza switched off some lights. Then she wheeled up what was, in effect, a kind of canopy on wheels. This she placed so that it overshadowed the divan and left Sybil in a deep shadow in the middle of outlying dim twilight.
'Too much light is harmful to a complete trance,' she said.
'Now, I think, we are ready. Bella?'
Bella came out of the shadows. The two women approached me. With her right hand Thyrza took my left. Her left hand took Bella's right, Bella's left hand found my right hand. Thyrza's hand was dry and hard, 'Bella's was cold and boneless – it felt like a slug in mine and I shivered in revulsion.
Thyrza must have touched a switch somewhere, for music sounded faintly from the ceiling. I recognised it as Mendelssohn's 'Funeral March.'
'Mise en scиne.' I said to myself rather scornfully. 'Meretricious trappings!' I was cool and critical – but nevertheless aware of an undercurrent of some unwanted emotional apprehension.
The music stopped. There was a long wait. There was only the sound of breathing, Bella's slightly wheezy, Sybil's deep and regular.
And then, suddenly, Sybil spoke. Not, however, in her own voice. It was a man's deep voice, as unlike her own mincing accents as could be. It had a guttural foreign accent.
'I am here,' the voice said.
My hands were released. Bella flitted away into the shadows. Thyrza said: 'Good evening. Is that Macandal?'
'I am Macandal.'
Thyrza went to the divan and drew away the protecting canopy. The soft light flowed down on to Sybil's face. She appeared to be deeply asleep. In this repose her face looked quite different.
The lines were smoothed away. She looked years younger. One could almost say that she looked beautiful.
Thyrza said:
'Are you prepared, Macandal, to submit to my desire and my will?'
The new deep voice said:
'I am.'
'Will you undertake to protect the body of the Dossu that lies here and which you now inhabit, from all physical injury and harm? Will you dedicate its vital force to my purpose, that that purpose may be accomplished through it?'
'I will.'
'Will you so dedicate this body that death may pass through it, obeying such natural laws as may be available in the body of the recipient?'
'The dead must be sent to cause death. It shall be so.'
Thyrza drew back a step. Bella came up and held out what I saw was a crucifix. Thyrza placed it on Sybil's breast in a reversed position. Then Bella brought a small green phial. From this Thyrza poured out a drop or two on to Sybil's forehead, and traced something with her finger. Again I fancied that it was the sign of the cross upside down.
She said to me, briefly, 'Holy water from the Catholic church at Garsington.'
Her voice was quite ordinary, and this, which ought to have broken the spell, did not do so. It made the whole business, somehow, more alarming.
Finally she brought that rather horrible rattle we had seen before. She shook it three times and then clasped Sybil's hand round it.
She stepped back and said:
'All is ready.'
Bella repeated the words:
'All is ready -'
Thyrza addressed me in a low tone:
'I don't suppose you're much impressed, are you, by all the ritual? Some of our visitors are. To you, I dare say, it's all so much mumbo jumbo. But don't be too sure. Ritual – a pattern of words and phrases sanctified by time and usage, has an effect on the human spirit. What causes the mass hysteria of crowds? We don't know exactly. But it's a phenomenon that exists. These old-time usages, they have their part – a necessary part, I think.'
Bella had left the room. She came back now, carrying a white cock. It was alive and struggling to be free.
Now with white chalk she knelt down and began to draw signs on the floor round the brazier and the copper bowl. She set down the cock with its beak on the white curving line round the bowl and it stayed there motionless.
She drew more signs, chanting as she did so, in a low guttural voice. The words were incomprehensible to me but as she knelt and swayed, she was clearly working herself up to some pitch of obscene ecstasy.
Watching me, Thyrza said, 'You don't like it much? It's old, you know, very old. The death spell, according to old recipes handed down from mother to daughter.'
I couldn't fathom Thyrza. She did nothing to further the effect on my senses which Bella's rather horrible performances might well have had. She seemed deliberately to take the part of a commentator.
Bella stretched out her hands to the brazier and a flickering flame sprang up. She sprinkled something on the flames and a thick cloying perfume filled the air.
'We are ready,' said Thyrza.
The surgeon, I thought, picks up his scalpel…
She went over to what I had taken to be a radio cabinet. It opened up and I saw that it was a large
