Barney looked up in surprise. 'When I telephoned the office, I gave only the bare facts about my having got on to Lothar. I said nothing about the Abbey and the hellish business that took place there. How did you know...'
Smiling slightly, C.B. replied. 'Otto had a vision, and knocked me up in the middle of the night. I've since had a long report from the Cambridge police, and another from the U.S. Security people. Between them I've managed to form a pretty good picture of what happened. But of course there are gaps in it; and I'd like you now to give me a detailed account of your activities from the time you left Inspector Thompson after having a drink with him at The World's End.'
With an effort Barney dragged his thoughts away from Mary and for ten minutes made, in jerky staccato sentences, his report about his encounter with Ratnadatta and all that had followed.
When he had done, C.B. said, 'That clears up quite a lot of points. Now I'll give you my side of it. A little before two o'clock the Office called me and relayed your message. When I learned that you had actually contacted Lothar and believed him to be on his way to London I naturally went all out to get him. I not only alerted Special Branch, but got the Chief Constables of all the Home Counties out of bed to lay on networks in case he made for some hideout on the East or South coasts. After half an hour I'd done all I could so, having told the Office to call me if they got him, I put out the light and went to sleep again.
'About an hour later my step-son roused me out. Otto had woken him by hammering on the front door. I had Otto in and this is what he had to say. Round about midnight he was awakened by a violent blow on the chin. He says it was as though a flaming torch had been thrust into his face. Instantly he became identified with Lothar and, I suppose one can say, inside his mind.'
'He saw as clearly as though in strong sunshine, a chapel in the ruined Abbey to which you had been taken, and you struggling in the grip of two hooded men. He was aware that Mary Morden was there and that it was she who had inflicted this grievous injury upon him. Although within seconds everything went black, he knew that you had got away, but at the moment his mind was obsessed with his desire to be revenged on Mary. Some of the Satanists produced torches and he rallied his strength to put a terrible curse upon her. But Colonel Washington intervened and threatened to rat on him unless he postponed taking any action against her.'
'So that's what happened.' Barney let out a swift sigh. His relief for Mary was faintly tinged with jealousy at the thought that it was the American instead of himself who had succeeded in protecting her; but he added quickly, 'And what then? Did they go straight to the air base?�
'I gather so. Otto's chin was paining him severely; so he got out of bed and bathed it. As the injury was a form of burn, that made matters worse rather than better, and for a time he lost touch with the situation. He says that when he picked it up again he seemed to be poised above a dark wood that was filled with fog; but he could see through the fog. He saw Lothar and the others making their way to several cars on the edge of the wood, then get into them and drive off. He saw you, too, on the other side of the wood, stumbling about in it, and obviously lost.'
'Then, instead of getting on the telephone to me at once, the fool swallowed five or six aspirins to dull his pain, and got back into bed again. As he lay there he picked up Lothar in a car with Colonel Washington and Mary Morden. The car was approaching the air base, but soon after they had entered it the aspirins began to work and he dozed off. About three o'clock he woke, thought over his vision and decided that he ought not to wait until the morning to tell me about it; so he got up, dressed and came round to Dovehouse Street.
'As soon as I had heard Otto's story I felt sure that you were on the wrong scent about their being on their way to London. What is more, in view of the last coup Lothar pulled off, the idea that he had been taken into a United States air base by an Air Force Colonel who was another Satanist properly put the wind up me.
I telephoned a warning to the base and asked that Colonel Washington and anyone with him should be put under preventive arrest. Then I hurried into my clothes, came up to the Office and gave the whole story over the scrambler line to H.Q. Strategic Air Command at Lakenheath in Suffolk.
'Half an hour later they came back to me to say that we'd missed the boat. Apparently Washington is a real rough diamond, but he was an ace flyer in the war, and stayed on in the Air Force afterwards only because he is mad-keen on flying. He has stacks of money and in addition to living like a prince in this house, the Cedars, outside the base with a team of imported coloured boys to look after him, he has his own private six-seater aircraft that he flies himself whenever he goes on leave to the Continent. He had applied for leave in the regular way and been given a fortnight. His 'plane is fitted with equipment for night flying; so no one thought it particularly strange that he should elect to take off at one in the morning. His service record is a brilliant one and there has never been the slightest hint of anything against him on security grounds.
'They knew nothing of anyone who might be Lothar, and the night duty-officer who was reporting to me obviously thought that I'd been sold a cock-and-bull story. No doubt that was partly because I had suggested in the first place that Washington was probably about to fly one of their super-bombers off to Russia; and it transpired that he hadn't. I told this sceptical type to order a check-up on all secret equipment at the base to see if anything was missing; and that he had better get his Chief out of bed to take over from him, or he might regret it. After that, to fill in time I got on to Thompson to enquire how the raid on that place at Cremorne had gone off.'
Barney suddenly looked up. 'Bejesus! My mind has been so taken up with Mary and Lothar that I've never given it a thought. How did it go, Sir?'
'Ace high. We bagged the lot with their pants down. Thompson said that when they went in it was like a scene from the Folies Bergere, and that he hadn't seen so many nudes since his uncle took him on a trip to Paris when he was a youngster. They were bundled up in a blanket apiece and taken off to Cannon Row. There were about thirty of them and some dozen coloured people, men and women, but they were only staff, and all appeared to be slightly loopy.'
'Have you got the names of the Satanists yet?'
'Not the lot. When I rang up the Special Branch boys were still grilling them. But among them there is one cop that the Yard are particularly pleased about. He is a saintly-looking old gentleman named Bingley. His speciality is luring little girls into back-lots and strangling them. After his last murder the police had a clear case against him but before they could arrest him he disappeared. That was five years ago, and evidently he has been lying low very comfortably in the house at Cremorne ever since.'
'How about Ratnadatta?'
'Oh, he's been sent up from Fulham, to join the rest of the bunch.'
'Do you think the police will succeed in getting enough evidence to prove that some of them murdered Teddy Morden?�
Verney shook his head. 'I rather doubt it. Our best hope of that is that one of them will turn Queen's Evidence. But these people are not ordinary crooks. Such previous experience as I've had with Satanists has shown that generally they are so terrified of their Infernal Master, and of other members of their Fraternity who have escaped the net, that they prefer to face any legal punishment for obscene behaviour, and so on, rather than risk what might come to them if they spilled the beans about anything the police have failed to find out for themselves. But, of course, Special Branch are searching the place from attic to cellar, so there is a chance that they may come upon some incriminating documents.'
'How about the photos of Tom Ruddy and Mary?�