“There have been further developments?”
“Yes, many. News has reached me that our adversary is planning some kind of papal coronation in the near future, when I believe he will reach the very zenith of his powers. We must seek to destroy him before this moment comes. Afterwards I fear there will be little we can do to stop him.”
“So how long do we have?”
“A week, perhaps a little more.”
Omally turned his face towards the French windows. “So,” said he, “after all this waiting, the confrontation will be suddenly upon us. I do not relish it, I must admit. I hope you know what you are doing, Professor.”
“I believe that I do John, never fear.”
The door to the Seaman’s Mission was securely bolted. Great iron hasps had been affixed to its inner side and through these ran a metal rod the thickness of a broom handle, secured to the concrete floor by an enormous padlock. Within the confines of the Mission the air was still and icy cold. Although long shafts of sunlight penetrated the elaborate stained glass of the windows and fell in coloured lozenges upon the mosaic floor, they brought no warmth from the outer world. For no warmth whatever could penetrate these icy depths. Here was a tomb of utter darkness and utter cold. Something hovered in the frozen air, something to raise the small hairs upon the neck, something to chill the heart and numb the senses.
And here a face moved from the impenetrable darkness into the light. It was rigid and pale as a corpse, a face cut from timeless marble. The nose aquiline, the nostrils flared, the mouth a cruel slit, and the eyes, set into that face, two hellish blood-red orbs of fire. The face traversed the stream of frozen sunlight and was gone once more into the gloom.
Slow yet certain footsteps crossed the marbled floor and firm hands gripped a monstrous throne which rose at the end of the pilastered hall. The brooding figure seated himself. Whatever thoughts dwelt within his skull were beyond human comprehension. His being was at one with the sombre surroundings, the gloom, the terrible cold.
And then from hidden recesses of the darkling hall, there came other figures, walking erect upon two legs yet moving in a way so unlike that of humankind as to touch the very soul with their ghastliness. Forward they came upon dragging feet, to stand swaying, five in all, before their master. Then low they bowed, touching the chill floor with their faces. They murmured softly, imploringly.
The being upon the throne raised a languid hand to silence them. Beneath the hems and cuffs of their embroidered garments, touched upon briefly by the cold sunlight, there showed glimpses of their vile extremities. Here the twisted fibrous claw of a hand, here a gnarled and rootlike leg or ankle, for here were no human worshippers, here were the spawn of the bottomless pit itself. Foul and unspeakable creations, sickening vomit of regions beyond thought.
The red-eyed man gazed down upon them. A strange light began to grow around him, increasing in power and clarity. His very being throbbed with a pulsating energy.
He raised his mighty hand above his head and brought it down on to the arm of his throne. A voice rose up in his throat, a voice like no other that had ever spoken through earth’s long aeons.
“I will have it,” he said, “soon all shall be mine.” The creatures below him squirmed at his feet in an ecstasy of adoration. “There will be a place for you my children, my five grand Cardinals of the Holy See, you will know a place in my favour. But now there is much to be done; those who would plot my destruction must be brought to their destiny; the Professor, he must be dragged before me, and the Irishman. Tonight you must go for them. I will tolerate no mistake or you shall know my displeasure. Tonight it must be, and now be gone.”
The writhing creatures drew themselves erect, their heads still bowed in supplication. One by one they shuffled from the great hall leaving the red-eyed man alone with his unspeakable thoughts.
Atop the Mission roof and hanging sloth-like by his heels, a lone figure had watched this gothic fantasy through a chink in the Mission’s ventilator. The lone figure was none other than Jim Pooley, Brentford’s well-known man of the turf and spy for the forces of mankind, truth and justice, and he had overheard all of the ghastly speech before he lost his footing and descended to the Mission’s row of dustbins in a most undignified and noisy manner.
“Balls,” moaned mankind’s saviour, wiping clotted fish scales from his tweeds and making a timely if somewhat shop-soiled departure from the Mission’s grounds and off across the Butts Estate.
Archroy was working out on Father Moity’s horizontal bars. Since the arrival through the post of book two and later book three of Count Dante’s course in the deadly arts of Dimac the lad had known a renewed vigour, a vibrant rejuvenation of his vital forces. The young priest watched him exercise, marvelling at the fluency of his movements, the ease with which he cleared the vaulting horse at a single bound. All he could do was to clap enthusiastically and applaud the astonishing exhibition of super-human control and discipline.
“You are to be congratulated, Archroy,” said Father Moity. “I have never seen the like of this.”
“I am only beginning, Father,” Archroy replied, “watch this.” He gave out with an enormous scream, threw his hands forward into the posture the Count described as “the third poised thrust of penetrating death” and leapt from the floor on to a high stanchion atop the gymnasium clock.
“Astonishing.” The young priest clapped his hands again. “Amazing.”
“It is the mastery of the ancient oriental skills,” Archroy informed him, returning to the deck from his twenty-foot eyrie.
“Bravo, bravo, but tell me my son, to what purpose do you intend that such outstanding gymnastics be put to? It is too late now for the Olympics.”
Archroy skipped before him, blasting holes in the empty air with lightning fists. “I am a man sorely put upon, Father,” said he.
The priest bowed his head in an attitude of prayer. “These are sorry times for all of us. Surely if you have problems you might turn to me, to God, to the Church?”
“God isn’t doing much for your Church at present.”
The priest drew back in dismay. “Come now,” said he, “these are harsh and cruel words, what mean you by them?”
Archroy ceased his exercises and fell into a perfect splits, touched his forehead to his right toe and rose to his feet. “You have no congregation left, Father, hadn’t you noticed?”
The young priest dropped to his knees. “I have fallen from grace.”
“You have done nothing of the sort, your flock has been lured away by a callous and evil man. I have taken a lot of stick over the past few months and I have gone to some lengths to find out what is going on hereabouts. My ear has, of late, been pressed against many a partition door and I know what I’m talking about.”
Father Moity rose clumsily to his feet. “I would know more of this my son, let us repair to my quarters for a small sherry.”
“Well, just a small one, Father, I am in training.”