Having witnessed the Great Ram perform more astonishing miracles, Mary accepted without question Wash's claim to control local weather conditions by magic, but she said, 'All the same, unless you can turn slabs of stone into divans, and the hard ground into a carpet, there can't be much fun in holding an orgy there.'
'We don't; not in the ruin. I've rented a house not far off that's got all the etceteras. Once a month we adjourn there after the ceremony. There's no women initiates in this little Lodge I've founded for my boys. I get out from Cambridge a picked bunch of dolls for them to hit it up with. The dolls are not wise to what goes on beforehand in the Abbey. They're just invited to a party where there'll be prizes for the hottest momma, and paid off in the morning.'
'Shall we be going there to-night?�
'No. We've only to do the rituals, perform the sacrifice and initiate you; then we beat it just as fast as we can.'
'Does that mean that I'll have to ... to do my Temple Service in the ruin?'
'Yeah. You'll have to take it on the altar stone, honey. And for once in my life I'll be jealous. You've sure got under my skin. I'll just hate the others even eyeing you on the stone, let alone what'll follow.'
'I ... Wash; listen!' she burst out. 'I'm going to hate it, too, now I know you feel like that about me. And as long as you do I'd be content to remain a neophyte. You can give me everything I want without my becoming a witch. Let's postpone my initiation. You can drop me somewhere before we get to the Abbey and I'll wait on the roadside until you are through with your rituals and can pick me up again.'
With her pulses racing she waited breathlessly for his reply. If he agreed, not only would she escape the dreaded ordeal of initiation but, infinitely more important, she would have a chance to get to a telephone and bring the police on the scene before they could murder Barney.
'That's mighty handsome of you, honey,' he said softly. 'You must care quite a lot about old Wash to offer to forgo this chance to acquire power, so as to spare him the sight of you playing the part of a push-over. I'd give a packet to be able to take you up on your offer.'
'But you can! Why shouldn't you?'
He shook his head. 'No dice, honey. I could have if the Great Ram wasn't in on this party. But he is; and he's offered to initiate you himself. That's one hell of an honour. To turn it down just isn't possible; and the initiation wouldn't make sense unless you do your stuff in the Creation rite. If you tried to stall now he'd maybe think it was because you couldn't take our giving Doctor Dee the works, and meant to apostasize. Then he'd send out a curse that would blast you where you stood.'
With a sigh Mary lay back and closed her eyes. Her brief hope had been dashed and it now seemed that nothing short of a miracle could save Barney's life. Silently but fervently she began to pray to the Holy Virgin to intercede for him.
Barney's thoughts, meanwhile, were almost equally chaotic. Being completely unaware of the peril which threatened to bring his existence to an abrupt termination in the very near future, the idea of trying to get away from his sinister companion never entered his mind; it was filled with a jumble of speculations which shuttled swiftly to and fro between the man beside him and Mary. To him it seemed a marvellous piece of luck that while seeking for Mary down here in the country he should have stumbled on Lothar. Although an Irishman, Barney had the quality of an English bulldog and, having made contact with the Satanist whom his chief was so anxious to lay by the heels, nothing could have induced him to let go. To him it was now only a question of how best to secure Lothar's arrest. Yet he found it exceedingly difficult to concentrate on the problem because Mary's enraged face and furious denunciation of him persistently rose up in his mind.
The revelation that she was the Mary McCreedy of his salad days had left him temporarily stunned. He could not think now how he had failed to recognize her; she had made it clear enough that she had recognized him. But why had she not revealed the fact, and given him a chance to explain?
He wondered then, a shade uneasily, what explanation he could have given, except that on coming into his title his uncle had insisted on his changing his whole way of life. But evidently she believed that he had invented his title, and that was hardly surprising in view of the lies he had told her about his having spent most of his life in Kenya. That could be put right, but how much was he really to blame for the miseries she had suffered after he had left Dublin?
Thrusting the question aside, he switched his mind back to Lothar. Evidently the Satanist did not suspect either Mary or himself, as he had offered to initiate them. What form would the initiation take? Something pretty vile without a doubt. Spitting on the Cross, oaths of fidelity to the Devil, and a sexual 'free for all' to finish up with, seemed the probable programme. At the last item his thoughts switched back to Mary.
Was she really as hardboiled as she now appeared? Apparently she had been thoroughly enjoying herself here for the past week with the great hulking American. Perhaps, then, she would not mind giving herself to several different men during the course of a midnight orgy. Mentally he groaned at the thought.
In his fury he had stormed at her, 'Once a whore always a whore!' but was that really true? Not necessarily; and certainly not in her case. He knew now that she had been forced into prostitution, and it was clear from her having married Teddy Morden that she had escaped from it as soon as she had the chance. The fact that she was now living with the American could not be held against her. It needed only a second thought to appreciate that she was doing so as a stage in her campaign to get evidence against Teddy's murderers. If that was so she was going to hate taking part in an orgy as much as he did the thought of her doing so.
Lothar had not addressed a word to him. With regal unconcern for the fact that he had a passenger the Great Ram remained deep in his own thoughts, driving the powerful car with ease and skill so that it maintained an almost unvarying distance of some fifty yards from the rear lights of the other car.
Barney shot Lothar a sidelong glance. He was wondering now if by some means he could prevent the Satanist from getting to the Esbbat, and so save Mary from the ordeal of initiation. The only possibility seemed to be to wait until the car slowed down, then turn and strike him senseless by a sudden blow behind the ear. But as long as they were moving at more than twenty miles an hour that would be much too dangerous. Barney realized that before he could grab the wheel the car would be off the road. If it turned over or crashed into a tree he might be seriously injured, and so have robbed himself of the chance to capture Lothar. Yet if he waited until the car slowed down on approaching their destination, it was certain that the car in front would already have pulled up. The big American would be getting out and would be bound to see the result of an attack on Lothar. He would come dashing to the rescue long before the stunned Satanist could be pulled out of the car and dragged off into the bushes. These considerations swiftly decided Barney against making such an attempt unless they lost touch with the car ahead or for some unforeseen reason Lothar had to reduce their pace to something near a crawl.
Again his thoughts went back to Mary. He now remembered her clearly as a lovely golden-haired slip of a girl who had been the pick of the dance-hostesses in the restaurant where she worked, but he had only vague memories of the single night they had spent together. He had had a big win that day on a horse called 'Cherry Pie' and, as usual when his luck was in, splashed a good part of the proceeds in standing champagne to all and sundry; so he had been pretty tight himself by the time he had persuaded her to let him take her to an hotel. He recalled his disappointment at finding her frigid and later his annoyance at her not having told him to begin with that she was a virgin, but apart from that his mind was a blank.