The Devil Rides Out

Instantly a roar of savage triumph filled the room, coming from beneath their feet. The ab-human monster from the outer circle—that obscene sack-like Thing—appeared again. Its body vibrated with tremendous rapidity. It screamed at them with positively frantic glee. With incredible speed the stallion was swung by its invisible rider at the gap in the protective barrier. The black beast plunged, scattering the gutted candles and dried mandrake, then reared above them, its great, dark belly on a level with their heads, its enormous hoofs poised in mid-air about to batter out their brains.

For one awful second it hovered there while Richard crouched, gazing upward, his arms locked tight round the unconscious Marie Lou. De Richleau stood his ground above them both, the sweat pouring in great rivulets down his lean face.

Almost, it seemed, the end had come. Then the Duke used his final resource, and did a thing which shall never be done except in the direst emergency when the very soul is in peril of destruction. In a clear sharp voice he pronounced the last two lines of the dread Sussamma Ritual.

A streak of light seemed to curl for a second round the stallion’s body, as though it had been struck with unerring aim, caught in the toils of some gigantic whip-lash and hurled back. The Thing disintegrated instantly in sizzling atoms of opalescent light. The horse dissolved into the silent shadows.

Those mysterious and unconquerable powers, the Lords of Light, the Timeless Ones, had answered; compelled by those mystic words to leave their eternal contemplation of Supreme Beatitude for a fraction of earthly time, to intervene for the salvation of those four small flickering flames that burned in the beleaguered humans.

An utter silence descended upon the room. It was so still that De Richleau could hear Richard’s heart pounding in his breast. Yet he knew that by that extreme invocation they had been carried out of their bodies on to the fifth Astral plane. His conscious brain told him that it was improbable that they would ever get back. To call upon the very essence of light requires almost superhuman courage, for Prana possesses an energy and force utterly beyond the understanding of the human mind. As it can shatter darkness in a manner beside which a million candle-power searchlight becomes a pallid beam, so it can attract all lesser light to itself and carry it to realms undreamed of by infinitesimal man.

For a moment it seemed that they had been ripped right out of the room and were looking down into it. The pentacle had become a flaming star. Their bodies were dark shadows grouped in its centre. The peace and silence of death surged over them in great saturating waves. They were above the house. Cardinals Folly became a black speck in the distance. Then everything faded.

Time ceased, and it seemed that for a thousand thousand years they floated, atoms of radiant matter in an immense immeasurable void—circling for ever in the soundless stratosphere —being shut off from every feeling and sensation, as though travelling with effortless impulse five hundred fathoms deep below the current levels of some uncharted sea.

Then, after a passage of eons in human time they saw the house again, infinitely far beneath them, their bodies lying in the pentacle and that darkened room. In an utter eerie silence the dust of centuries was falling … falling. Softly, impalpably, like infinitely tiny particles of swansdown, it seemed to cover them, the room, and all that was in it, with a fine grey powder.

De Richleau raised his head. It seemed to him that he had been on a long journey and then slept for many days. He passed his hand across his eyes and saw the familiar bookshelves in the semi-darkened library. The bulbs above the cornice flickered and the lights came full on.

Marie Lou had come to and was struggling to her knees while Richard fondled her with trembling hands, and murmured : ‘We’re safe, darling—safe.’

Simon’s eyes were free now from that terrible maniacal glare. The Duke had no memory of having unloosened his bonds but he knelt beside them looking as normal as he had when they had first entered upon that terrible weaponless battle:

‘Yes, we’re safe—and Mocata is finished,’ De Richleau passed a hand over his eyes as if they were still clouded. ‘The Angel of Death was sent against us tonight, but he failed to get us, and he will never return empty-handed to his dark Kingdom. Mocata summoned him so Mocata must pay the penalty.’

‘Are—are you sure of that?’ Simon’s jaw dropped suddenly.

‘Certain. The age-old law of retaliation cannot fail to operate. He will be dead before the morning.’

‘But—but,’ Simon stammered. ‘Don’t you realise that Mocata never does these things himself! He throws other people into a hypnotic trance and makes them do his devilish business for him. One of the poor wretches who are in his power will have to pay for this night’s work.’

Even as he spoke there came the sound of running footsteps along the flagstones of the terrace. A rending crash as a heavy boot landed violently on the woodwork of the french windows.

They burst open, and framed in them stood no vision but Rex himself. Haggard, dishevelled, hollow-eyed, his face a ghastly mask of panic, fear and fury.

He stood there for a moment staring at them as though they were ghosts. In his arms he held the body of a woman; her fair hair tumbled across his right arm, and her long silk-stockinged legs dangled limply from the other.

Suddenly two great tears welled up into his eyes and trickled slowly down his furrowed cheeks. Then as he laid the body gently on the floor they saw that it was Tanith, and knew, by her strange unnatural stillness, that she was dead.

CHAPTER XXVIII

NECROMANCY

‘Oh Rex!’ Marie Lou dropped to her knees beside Tanith, knowing that this must be the girl of whom he had raved to her that afternoon. ‘How awful for you!’

‘How did this happen?’ the Duke demanded. It was imperative that he should know at once every move in the enemy’s game, and the urgent note in his voice helped to pull Rex together.

‘I hardly know,’ he gasped out. ‘She got me along because she was scared stiff of that swine Mocata. I couldn’t call you up this afternoon and later when I tried your line was blocked, but I had to stay with her. We were going to pass the night together in the parlour, but round about midnight she left me and then —oh, God ! I fell asleep.’

‘How long did you sleep for?’ asked Richard quickly.

‘Several hours, I reckon. I was about all in after yesterday, but the second I woke I dashed up to her room and there she was, dressed as she is now—lying asleep, I figured—in an armchair. I tried to wake her but I couldn’t. Then I got real scared— grabbed hold of her—and beat it down those stairs six at a time. You’ve just no notion how frantic I was to get out of that place, and next thing I knew—I saw your light and came busting in here. She—she’s not dead, is she?’

‘Oh, Rex, you poor darling,’ Marie Lou stammered as she chafed Tanith’s cold hands. ‘I—I’m afraid––’

‘She isn’t—she can’t be!’ he protested wildly. ‘That fiend’s only thrown her into a trance or something.’

Richard had taken a little mirror from Marie Lou’s bag. He held it against Tanith’s bloodless lips. No trace of moisture marred its surface. Then he pressed his hand beneath her breast.

‘Her heart’s stopped beating,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry, old chap, but—well, I’m afraid you’ve got to face it.’

‘The old-fashioned tests of death are not conclusive,’ Simon whispered to the Duke. ‘Scientists say now that even arteries can be cut and fail to bleed, but life still remains in the body. They’ve all come round to the belief that we’re animated by a sort of atomic energy—call it the soul if you like—and that the body may retain that vital spark without showing the least sign of life. Mightn’t it be some form of catalepsy like that?’