Alleyn said: “You’re a braver woman than you admit. You’ve tried for months to get me here, knowing that if I succeed your job will be gone and you will have to break yourself of your drug. You risked trying to tip me off yesterday morning and you risked coming to plead with young Herrington here tonight. You’re a woman of science with judgement and curiosity and a proper scepticism. You know, positively, that this silly oath of silence was taken under the influence of your drug, that the threats it carries are meaningless, that it’s your clear duty to abandon it. I think you will believe me when I say that if you keep faith with us tonight you will have our full protection afterwards.”
“You can’t protect me,” she said, “from myself.”
“We can try. Come! Having gone so far, why not all the way?”
“I’m so frightened,” said Miss Garbel. “You can’t think. So dreadfully frightened.”
She clasped her claw-like hands together. Alleyn covered them with his own. “All right,” he said. “Never mind. You’ve done a lot. I won’t ask you to tell me about the rites. Don’t go to the ceremony. Can you send a message?”
“I must go. There must be seven.”
“One for each point of the pentagram, with Oberon and the Black Robe in the middle?”
“Did they tell you? Ginny and Robin? They wouldn’t dare.”
“Call it a guess. Before we separate I’m going to ask you to make one promise tonight. Shall we say for Grizel Locke’s sake? Don’t smoke so much marihuana that you may lose control of yourself and perhaps betray us.”
“I shan’t betray you. I can promise that. I don’t promise not to smoke and I implore you to depend on me for nothing more than this. I won’t give you away.”
“Thank you a thousand times, my dear cousin-by-marriage. Before the night is over I shall ask if I may call you Penelope.”
“Naturally you may. In my bad moments,” said poor Miss Garbel, “I have often cheered myself up by thinking of you both as Cousins Roddy and Aggie.”
“Have you really?” Alleyn murmured and was saved from the the necessity of further comment by the sound of a cascade of bells.
Miss Garbel was thrown into a great state of perturbation by the bells which, to Alleyn, were reminiscent of the dinner chimes that tinkle through the corridors of ocean liners.
“There!” she ejaculated with a sort of wretched triumph. “The Temple bells! And here we are in somebody else’s room and goodness knows what will become of us.”
“I’ll see if the coast’s clear,” Alleyn said. He took up his stick and then opened the door. The smell of incense hung thick on the air. Evidently candles had been lit on the lower landing. The stair-well sank into reflected light through which there rose whorls and spirals of scented smoke. As he watched, a shadow came up from below and the sound of bells grew louder. It was the Egyptian servant. Alleyn watched the distorted image of his tarboosh travel up the curved wall followed by that of his body and of his hands bearing the chime-of bells. Alleyn stood firm, leaning on his stick with his hood over his face. The Egyptian followed his own shadow upstairs, ringing his little carillon. He crossed the landing, made a salutation as he passed Alleyn and continued on his way upstairs.
Alleyn looked back into the room. Miss Garbel stood there, biting her knuckles. He went to her.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You can go down. If you feel very brave and venturesome keep as close as you dare to the Black Robe and if he looks like he’s making a mistake try and stop him. He only speaks French. Now, you’d better go.”
She shook her head two or three times. Then, with an incredible suggestion of conventional leave-taking she began to settle herself inside her robe. She actually held out her hand.
“Goodbye. I’m sorry I’m not a braver woman,” she said.
“You’ve been very brave for a long time and I’m exceedingly grateful,” Alleyn said.
He watched her go and after giving her about thirty seconds, blew out the candle and followed her.
ii
The stairs turned three times about the tower before he came limping to the bottom landing. Here a lighted candelabrum stood near a door: the door he had noticed yesterday morning. Now it was open. The air was dense with the reek of incense so that each candle flame blossomed in a nimbus. His feet sank into the deep carpet and dimly he could make out the door into Oberon’s room and the vista of wall-tapestries, receding into a passage.
Through the open door he saw four separate candlesticks, each with a lighted black candle. This, then, was the ante-room. Alleyn went in. The black velvet walls absorbed light and an incense burner hanging from the ceiling further obscured it. He could make out a partly opened curtain and behind this a rack of hanging robes. He could not be sure he was alone. Limping carefully, he made for the candles and took one up.
Remembering what Teresa had told him, he turned to the right and with his free hand explored the wall. The velvet surface was disagreeable to his touch. He moved along still pressing it and in a moment it yielded. He had found the swing-door into the temple.
There was an unwholesomeness about the silent obedience of the velvet door. It was as if everyday objects had begun to change their values. He followed his hand and walked, as it seemed, through the retreating wall into the temple.
At first he was aware only of two candle flames below the level of his knees and some distance ahead, six glowing braziers. Then he saw a white robe, squatting not far from a candle and then a black robe, near a second flame. He felt the tessellated floor under his feet and, using his stick, tapped his way across. “All the same,” he thought, “young Herrington’s stick is rubbershod.”
By the light of his own candle he made out the shape of the giant pentagram in the mosaic of the floor. It had been let into the pavement and was traced in some substance that acted as a reflector. The five-pointed star was enclosed in a double circle and he saw that at each of the points there was a smaller circle and in this a black cushion and a brazier filled with glowing embers. It was on one of these cushions that the white robe squatted. He drew close to it. A recognizable hand crept out from under the sleeve. It was Miss Garbel’s. He turned to the centre of the pentagram. Raoul was holding his candle under his own face. His hands and arms were gloved in black. He was seated, cross-legged on a black divan and in front of him was a brazier.
Alleyn murmured: “The lady behind you and to your right is not unfriendly. She knows who you are.”
Raoul signalled an assent.
“Depend on me for nothing — nothing,” admonished a ghost-whisper in French and then added in a sort of frenzy, “Not there! Not in the middle. Not yet. Like me. There!”
“Quick, Raoul. There!”
Raoul darted into the point of the pentagram in front of Miss Garbel’s. He put down his candle on the floor and pulled forward his hood.
Alleyn moved to the encircled point opposite Miss Garbel’s. He had seated himself on the cushion before his brazier and had laid down his stick and candle when a light danced across the facets of the pentagram. He sensed, rather than heard, the entrance of a new figure. It passed so close that he recognized Annabella Wells’s scent. She moved into the encircled point on his right and seated herself facing outwards as he did. At the same time there was a new glint of candlelight and the sound of a subsidence behind and to the left of Alleyn. In a moment or two a figure, unmistakably Baradi’s, swept round the pentagram and entered it between Annabella and Raoul. Alleyn guessed he had taken up his position at the centre. At the same time the bells cascaded close at hand. “Here we go,” he thought.