The Devil Rides Out

Recovering a little he stood up, marched out into Brook Street and purchased a great sheaf of lilac from a florist’s a few doors down. Returning with it to the hotel he suddenly realised that he still did not know Tanith’s real name, but catching sight of the boy who had paged him, he beckoned him over.

‘Here boy—take these up to the lady’s room with Mr. Van Ryn’s compliments.’ Then he resumed his seat near the lift with happy confidence.

Five minutes later the lift gates opened. An elderly woman leaning upon a tall ebony cane stepped out. At the first glance Rex recognised the parrot-beaked nose, the nut-cracker chin and the piercing black eyes of the old Countess D’Urfe. Before he had time to collect his wits she had advanced upon him and extended a plump, beringed hand.

‘Monsieur Van Ryn,’ she croaked. ‘It is charming that you should call upon me—sank you a thousand times for those lovely flowers.’

CHAPTER IX

THE COUNTESS D’URFE TALKS OF MANY CURIOUS THINGS

‘Ha! Ha!—not a bit of it—it’s great to see you again.’

Rex gave a weak imitation of a laugh. He had only spoken to the old crone for two minutes on the previous evening and that, when he had first arrived at Simon’s party, for the purpose of detaching Tanith from her. Even if she had seen him drive up to Claridges what in the world could have made her imagine that he had come to visit her. If only he hadn’t sent up that lilac he might have politely excused himself—but he could hardly tell her now that he had meant it for someone else.

‘And how is Monsieur le Duc this morning?’ the old lady inquired, sinking into a chair he placed for her.

‘He asked me to present his homage, Madame,’ Rex lied quickly, instinctively picking a phrase which De Richleau might have used himself.

‘Ca, e’est tres gentille. ‘E is a charming man—charming an’ ‘is cigars they are superb.’ The Countess D’Urfe produced a square case from her bag and drew out a fat, dark Havana. As Rex applied a match she went on slowly : ‘But it ees not right that one Circle should make interference with the operations of another. What ‘ave you to say of your be’aviour lars’ night my young frien’?’

‘My hat,’ thought Rex, ‘the old beldame fancies we’re an opposing faction in the same line of business—‘I’ll have to use this if I can’; so he answered slowly : ‘We are mighty sorry to have to do what we did, but we needed Simon Aron for our own purposes.’

‘So!—you also make a search for the Talisman then?’

‘Sure—that is, the Duke’s taking a big interest in it.’

‘Which of us are not—and ‘oo but le petit Juif shall lead us to it.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Ave you yet attempted the Rite to Saturn?’

‘Yes, but things didn’t pan out quite as we thought they would,’ Rex replied cautiously, not having the faintest idea what they were talking about.

‘You ‘ave satisfy yourselves that the aloes and mastic were fresh, eh?’ The wicked old eyes bored into his.

‘Yes, I’m certain of that,’ he assured her.

‘You choose a time when the planet was in the ‘ouse of Capricorn, of course?’

‘Oh, surely!’

‘An’ you ‘ave not neglect to make Libation to Our Lady Babalon before ‘and?’

‘Oh, no, we wouldn’t do that!’

‘Then per’aps your periods of silence were not long enough?’

‘Maybe that’s so,’ he admitted hurriedly, hoping to close this madhatter’s conversation before he completely put his foot into it.

Countess D’Urfe nodded, then after drawing thoughtfully at her cigar she looked at him intently. ‘Silence,’ she murmured. ‘Silence, that ees always essential in the Ritual of Saturn—but you ‘ave much courage to thwart Mocata—‘e is powerful, that one.’

‘Oh, we’re not afraid of him,’ Rex declared and, recalling the highest grade of operator from his conversation with De Richleau, he added: ‘You see the Duke knows all about this thing—he’s an Ipsissimus.’

The old lady’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets at this announcement, and Rex feared that he had gone too far, but she leaned forward and placed one of her jewelled claws upon his arm. ‘An Ipsissimus!—an’ I ‘ave studied the Great Work for forty years, yet I ‘ave reached only the degree of Practicus. But no, ‘e cannot be, or ‘ow could ‘e fail with the Rite to Saturn?’

‘I only said that it didn’t pan out quite as we expected,’ Rex hastened to remind her, ‘and for the full dress business he’d need Simon Aron anyway.’

‘Of course,’ she nodded again and continued in an awestruck whisper, ‘an’ De Richleau is then a real Master. You must be far advanced for one so young—that ‘e allow you to work with ‘im.’

He flicked the ash off his cigarette but maintained a cautious silence.

‘I am not—‘ow you say—associated with Mocata long— since I ‘ave arrive only recently in England, but De Richleau will cast ‘im down into the Abyss—for ‘ow shall ‘e prevail against one who is of ten circles and a single square?’

Rex nodded gravely.

59

‘Could I not’— her dark eyes filled with a new eagerness — ‘would it not be possible for me to prostrate myself before your frien’. If you spoke for me also, per’aps ‘e would allow that I should occupy a minor place when ‘e proceeds again to the invocation?’

‘Ho! Ho!’ said Rex to himself, ‘so the old rat wants to scuttle from the sinking ship, does she? I ought to be able to turn this to our advantage,’ while aloud he said with a lordly air: ‘All things are possible—but there would be certain conditions.’

‘Tell me,’ she muttered swiftly.

‘Well, there is this question of Simon Aron.’

‘What question?—Now that you ‘ave ‘im with you—you can do with ‘im as you will.’

Rex quickly averted his gaze from the piercing black eyes. Evidently Mocata had turned the whole party out after they had got away with Simon. The old witch obviously had no idea that Mocata had regained possession of him later. In another second he would have given away their whole position by demanding Simon’s whereabouts. Instead—searching his mind desperately for the right bits of gibberish he said : ‘When De Richleau again proceeds to the invocation it is necessary that the vibrations of all present should be attuned to those of Simon Aron.’

‘No matter—willingly I will place myself in your ‘ands for preparation.’

‘Then I’ll put it up to him, but first I must obey his order and say a word to the lady who was with you at Aron’s house last night—Tanith.’ Having at last manoeuvred the conversation to this critical point, Rex mentally crossed his thumbs and offered up a prayer that he was right in assuming that they were staying at the hotel together.

She smiled, showing two rows of white false teeth. ‘I know it, and you must pardon, I beg, that we ‘ave our little joke with you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he shrugged, wondering anxiously to what new mystery she was alluding, but to his relief she hurried on.

‘Each morning we look into the crystal an’ when she sees you walk into the ‘otel she exclaim, “It is for me ‘e comes—the tall American,” and we ‘ave no knowledge that you are more than a Neophyte or a Zelator at the most, so when you send up the flowers she say to me, “You shall go down to ‘im instead an’ after we will laugh at the discomfiture of this would-be lover.” ‘

The smile broadened on Rex’s full mouth as he listened to the explanation of much that had been troubling him in the last hour, but it faded suddenly as he realised that, natural as it seemed compared to all this meaningless drivel which he had been exchanging with the old woman, it was in reality one more demonstration of the occult. These two women had actually seen him walk into the hotel lounge when they were sitting upstairs in their room peering into a piece of glass.