'Your insolence in believing for one moment that you could interfere with my plans fills me with amazement. That a creature like you, even aided by that backwoods magician you have besotted with your sex, should pit your puny wits against mine is a supreme impertinence.' Suddenly he gave an eerie cackle of high-pitched laughter, and added, 'How little you can understand the power that I wield. I, the Great Ram, have nothing to fear. No, not even when an army is sent against me. Come, I lift the barrier that bars your door. Follow me, and I will show you how I deal with my enemies.'
As he turned away Mary stood up. Whether she would or not she felt a compulsion to leave her cabin and walk down the tunnel after him. He led her out to the rock platform at which the cable railway ended. Pointing across the valley to a group of tiny figures making their way up through the snow towards a low saddle in the opposite range, he said:
'There go Mirkoss, my cook, and the other Chinese I have had working for me here. You see, I have a care for those who serve me faithfully, even if they are no more than slaves. You and that lovelorn fool, Twisting Snake, would also be on your way out of danger now had you not had the impudence to challenge me.'
Mary found her tongue at last, and murmured, 'But why should they have been in danger if they had remained here? When . . . when your rocket lands on Moscow the Russians will fire back at the American cities and those of the N.A.T.O. countries. They won't waste rockets on Switzerland.'
Again he gave his cynical high-pitched laugh. 'Of course, and I too shall be safe among these mountains; but not in this cave. I have a twin brother: a weak fool with whom I long since quarrelled; yet there remains a strong psychic link between us. A clever Englishman named Verney has used him to overlook me. So they are aware of my intentions, and by one means and another have discovered my retreat.'
At this admission, coupled with Verney's name, Mary's heart gave a bound. Perhaps the spool from the tape recorder that she had thrust on Barney had reached the Colonel and contributed to the hunt that must have started for the missing war-head soon after Wash had flown off with it. If the spool had reached Verney, Ratnadatta, Abaddon, Honorius and the rest of that murderous crew would by now have been arrested. So she would have succeeded in avenging poor Teddy after all. But had she? Within a few hours of the Great Ram launching his rocket London would be laid in ruins. Innocent and guilty alike would perish by the hundreds of thousands. The Satanists of Cremorne would have become cinders long before they could be brought to trial.
She knew that she and Wash would be given no further chance to sabotage the rocket. Now, she could only pray that some fault in its mechanism, some act of God, or even some overweening vanity on the part of the Great Ram himself, would delay the launching. The knowledge that Verney was on his way, and Barney too, perhaps, threw her into a fresh form of agony - for she felt that the strain of waiting and wondering if they would arrive on the scene in time to save the situation must soon prove unendurable.
Hardly had she thought of that before she was relieved from having to face it. Exclaiming 'Here they come! Here they come! I knew they could not be far off,' the Great Ram pointed down into the valley.
At the same moment the distant sound of motor engines was wafted up to her and she saw what seemed from that height a column of toy vehicles emerge from round the shoulder of the mountain. Cars, motor cycles, jeeps and tanks skidded and bumped along the uneven track until thirty or forty of them were visible. When the leading cars reached the engine-house they pulled up with a jerk. A score of figures tumbled out of them and ran towards the building.
The Great Ram gave a sinister chuckle. 'Now, little fool, you shall see how I deal with forces far stronger than yourself when they are brought against me.'
Instantly her joy at knowing friends to be so near was changed to awful apprehension, for it seemed clear that he had already planned to use some form of his evil power for their destruction. Yet he uttered no curse and made no gesture.
Suddenly there came a bright flash, a tongue of flame leapt skywards, and a moment later the roar of the explosion followed to echo and echo back and forth across the valley. Where the engine house had stood there was now a dense cloud of smoke and from it came up thinly the cries of the injured and the dying.
In Mary horror temporarily drove out fear. Swinging round she faced the Great Ram and screamed at him, 'You fiend! You fiend! May Heaven blast you for this murder!'
At that moment, had she had the bread knife with her she would have tried to kill him; but he had come for her so unexpectedly that she had had to leave it hidden under the blanket of her bunk. His only reaction was a scornful laugh, followed by a glance that instantly quelled her and forced her to lower her gaze.
'Come now,' he said abruptly. 'I have work to do, and you shall see me do it. Since you have shown yourself to be one of those who follow the pathetic slave religion started by the imposter Christ, it pleases me that you should hear me announce the death knell of Christianity. If He had the power to preserve it, He obviously would, but He has not; and I intend to show those among His followers who may survive how ill-placed their faith in this self-styled "Saviour of the World" has been. Go in now. You know the wireless cabin. Wait for me there while I watch for a little longer the consternation of those puny creatures down in the valley.'
She knew she must obey him, yet she still had a kick left in her and as she turned to re-enter the cave she burst out, 'You've wrecked the railway, but you've only killed a few of them. And it's certain that with those tanks there are mountain troops. They'll climb up here. For every one you kill they'll call up a dozen reinforcements. You've left it too late to escape. They are bound to get you.'
He tossed his head with the old arrogant gesture. 'Little fool, your persistent blindness to my power becomes almost amusing. Mirkoss and the Chinese I had to send away, otherwise they would have been trapped. But I, the Great Ram, am not as other men. When I will I can call down the cloud to hide the entrances to this cave and halt the climbers, unless they are prepared to risk death with every step they take. The cloud, though, will form no barrier to my sight, and I have long since learned to levitate myself; so I can pass over crevasses that no guide would attempt to cross. I am also impervious to cold; so I shall go upward and make my way unchallenged over the range into another valley where I have already made preparations for my reception.'
To that she could make no reply. It was clear that he had thought of everything. Stumbling a little, she made her way to the wireless cabin and threw herself into a chair there.
The thought that now obsessed her was that Barney might have been with Colonel Verney in the engine-house when it had blown up. She was past tears, but her very heart-strings were wrung with the visual image of her gay, laughter-loving Barney as a broken, twisted body being carried on a stretcher from that still-smoking ruin down in the valley. Her belief that he despised her made no difference to her love for him. And since she had realized, from what Wash had told her, that he must be one of Colonel Verney's young men, although she could not begin to account for such a strange metamorphosis, her love for him, instead of being only an unreasoning passion, had been sanctified by respect and admiration.
For what seemed a long time she sat crouched, wringing her hands, in the wireless cabin. It drifted through her mind that, by ripping at the wires and bending the terminals, she might put the set out of action. But a moment's thought told her that whether he made his proposed broadcast to the world or not did not matter in the least, as that had no bearing on his ability to launch the rocket.