I Barney had picked up the photograph and was staring at it as though his eyes might pop out of their sockets. It showed the stalwart grey-haired Tom Ruddy leaning forward on the far side of a richly furnished bed. Sitting up in the bed, nude to the thighs, an inviting smile on her lips, an encouraging hand on Ruddy's shoulder, was the beautiful prophetess. Almost choking with mixed emotions, he stammered:
'But... damn it... this is Margot Mauriac! How ... how could she have lent herself to this sort of thing? How could she?
Verney raised his prawn-like eyebrows. 'Really! Is she, now? Perhaps I ought to have guessed, but somehow I didn't. Her real name isn't Mauriac, though; it's Mary Morden.'
CHAPTER XVIII 'WHEN ROGUES FALL OUT...'
What!' exclaimed Barney, dropping the photographs. 'Teddy Morden's widow! Bejasus! Well, that explains a lot of things. The last time I saw her she confessed to me that her reason for wanting to become a Satanist was to have it in her power to be avenged on somebody. I understand that now. She must have believed, just as I did, that a link existed somewhere between Mrs. Wardeel's set-up and Morden's murder, decided that Ratnadatta was the link and that it was his crew of Satanists that had done Morden in; then made up her mind to become one herself as the only way of getting evidence against his killers.'
'That's right; or, at all events, it's the line she said she intended to follow when she came to see me before starting on the job.'
'Hang it all, Sir! Since you knew that she and I were working along the same lines, why didn't you tell me about her?'
C.B. shrugged. 'In our work it often pays better to let two people carry on an investigation unknown to one another. Otherwise, if one gets on the wrong track and tells the other, both may follow it, with the result that both of them waste a lot of time. That is why I said nothing to you about Mrs. Morden when she told me what she meant to do.'
'But later, Sir. My reports made it clear that both of us were on the right track. If only ...'
'No; you are off the mark there. When you told me that an attractive young woman had begun to attend Mrs. Wardeel's evenings a little before yourself, and of her having persuaded Ratnadatta to take her along to his Satanic circle, it did occur to me that she might be Mary Morden. If you remember, I questioned you very closely about her, but the description you gave me of Mrs. Mauriac was so totally unlike that of the Mrs. Morden I knew that I concluded they must be different women.' Picking up the photograph, C.B. went on, 'I told her that she would be wise to disguise herself, but I didn't credit her with being able to do the job so thoroughly. In this, her hair, eyebrows and mouth are entirely changed from when I last saw her. In fact, it wasn't until I began to study the photograph carefully that I recognized her.'
'I see. She hasn't been reporting to you in person, then, but in writing.'
'She hasn't been reporting to me at all. She offered her services but I told her that I couldn't possibly take her on officially.'
Barney's brown eyes smouldered. 'D'you mean that you let her go into this filthy business on her own, without either guidance or protection?�
'I did my best to argue her out of her idea, but she refused to be put off. I told her then that it would be better for her not to communicate with this office or myself unless she secured definite evidence which might give us a case against her husband's murderers because, if they learned that she had any connection with us, she might be murdered herself. But all this happened over seven weeks ago and, to tell the truth, I'd forgotten all about her till Thompson produced this photograph this morning.'
'Forgotten all about her!' Barney repeated angrily. 'Good God, Sir; I'd never have thought it of you. To let a lovely girl like her, with no experience of the game, go butting her head into a nest of the vilest crooks imaginable and never even give her a thought....'
'Steady on; steady on!' Verney cut in, but his voice remained as low and even as ever. 'Don't let your sense of chivalry run away with you; and try for a moment to appreciate what it means to occupy this chair. I gave you a key role in an important mission, but you are only one of a score of my people who are engaged on it. I have to receive all their reports as well as yours. And that is only one of my jobs. I have to supervise the watch that is maintained in every port in the kingdom against undesirables entering it; I'm responsible for security in all secret Scientific Establishments; I am having at least fifty potential spies or saboteurs either hunted or kept under observation. Even that is no more than half of it. I have to attend conferences at half-a-dozen Ministries and quite frequently others that take me abroad. This afternoon, for example, I shall be flying to Bonn at the invitation of my opposite number there, for a two-day visit to compare our methods with those in use by the West German Security Services. So your suggestion that I can find the time to keep a private eye upon any young woman who elects, against my advice, to play at being an amateur detective is really rather foolish.' 'I'm sorry, Sir. I'm afraid I hadn't thought of it like that, but...' 'That's all right, Barney. But if you are to go up the ladder here, as you show good promise of doing, you must train yourself to keep a sense of proportion. If it is any comfort to you, I did tell Mary Morden that should she find herself in danger she was to let me know, and I would at once come to her assistance.'
'But she is in danger. That's what I've been wanting to tell you. Of course, I should have told you what I'd heard about Ruddy when I saw you but, to be honest, I'd temporarily forgotten all about him. I came here this morning to tell you about Margot -Mary, I mean. She has been kidnapped by these fiends.' 'Kidnapped? How d'you know?'
'I was to have taken her out on Saturday evening, but I had to put her off because of our going down to Wales. As soon as we got back on Monday I tried to get in touch with her, but couldn't. I tried again several times yesterday, but it was no go; so I kept watch outside the house she lives in last night, hoping to catch her when she came in. By two a.m. she was still not back, so first thing this morning I did an illegal entry job on her flat.' 'You'd have been in a fine mess if you had been caught.' 'No. We know through Otto that Lothar is the Great Ram. Margot - Mary, I mean - has actually seen the Great Ram; which is more than we have. She told me so; even though she went back on it afterwards. My case would have been that I was searching for evidence of a connection between her and a wanted criminal that might lead us to him; and you would have told the police to lay off me.'
C.B. gave a grim little smile. 'Good line that. One up to you. I expect I should have hauled you out anyhow, but don't count on that as carte blanche to ride rough-shod over the law in future. Well, what did you find?'
'That she had been absent from Sunday, if not longer, and her clothes and luggage still being there showed that she had not gone off on a holiday. I went downstairs and questioned the woman who acts for the landlord. She had not seen Margot - damn it, Mary-since midday Saturday, and on Saturday evening Ratnadatta called, asked for Mary and, on learning that she was out, said he would wait in the downstairs hall till she returned. When she did come back, he must have hypnotized her or used some threat to make her go off with him. Anyhow, it's certain that he is at the bottom of her disappearance.'
'But she hasn't disappeared, much less been kidnapped.' Verney declared. 'We know from Ruddy that this photograph was taken on Saturday night, and his description of the house to which Biernbaum took him tallies with the one at Cremorne. It is a fair bet, too, that if Ratnadatta collected her an hour or two earlier that is where he would have taken her. So we have a double check on where she went to and no evidence whatever to suggest that she did not go there willingly.'
Barney frowned. 'Even if she did, it's impossible to believe that she played the part that she is reported to have willingly. She must have been coerced.'