The Devil Rides Out Page 17

  With gentle hands, they set about a more careful examination of Simon. His body was still terribly cold but they found that, except for where Rex had clawed at his neck, he had suffered no physical injury.

  ‘What do you figure to do now?’ Rex asked as the Duke opened his suitcase

  ‘Exorcise him in due form, in order to try and drive out any evil spirit by which he may be possessed.’

  ‘Like the Roman Catholic priests used to do in the Middle Ages.’

  ‘As they still do,’ De Richleau answered soberly,

  ‘What-in these days?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you remember the case of Helene Poirier who died only in 1914. She suffered from such terrible demoniacal possession that many of the most learned priests in France, including Monsiegneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, and Monsieur Mallet, Superior of the Grand Seminary, had to be called in before, with God’s grace, she could be freed from the evil spirit which controlled her.’

  ‘I didn’t think the Church admitted the existence of such things as witchcraft and black magic.’

  ‘Then you are very ignorant, my friend. I do not know the official views of others, but the Roman Church, whose authority comes unbroken over nineteen centuries from the time when Our Lord made St. Peter his vice regent on earth, has ever admitted the existence of the evil power. Why else should they have issued so many ordinances against it, or at the present time so unhesitatingly condemn all spiritualistic practices which they regard as the modern counterparts of necromancy, by which Hell’s emissaries seek to lure weak, foolish and trusting people into their net?’

  ‘I can’t agree to that,’ Rex demurred. ‘I know a number of Spiritualists, men and women of the utmost rectitude.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ De Richleau was arranging Simon’s limp body. They are entitled to their opinion and he who thinks rightly lives rightly. No doubt their high principles act as a protective barrier between them and the more dangerous entities of the spirit world. However, for the weak-minded and mentally frail such practices hold the gravest peril. Look at that Bavarian family of eleven people, all of whom went out of their minds after a Spiritualistic seance in 1921. The case was fully reported by the Press at the time and I could give you a dozen similar examples, all attributable to Diabolic possession, of course. In fact, according to the Roman Church, there is no phenomenon of modem Spiritism which cannot be paralleled in the records of old witch trials.’

  ‘According to them, maybe, but Simon’s not a Catholic.’

  ‘No matter, there is nothing to prevent a member of the Roman Church asking Divine aid for any man whatever his race or creed. Fortunately I was baptised a Catholic and, although I may not be a good one, I believe that with the grace of God, power will be granted to me this night to help our poor friend.

  ‘Kneel down now and pray silently, for all prayers are good if the heart is earnest and perhaps those of the Church of England more efficacious than others since we are now in the English countryside. It is for that reason I recite certain psalms from the book of Common Prayer. But be ready to hold him if he leaps up for, if he is possessed, the Demon within him will fight like a maniac.’

  De Richleau took up the holy water and sprinkled a few drops on Simon’s forehead. They remained there a moment and then trickled slowly down his drawn, furrowed face. But he remained corpse-like and still.

  ‘May the Lord be praised,’ murmured the Duke.

  ‘What is it?’ breathed Rex.

  ‘He is not actually possessed. If he were the holy water would have scalded him like boiling oil, and at its touch the Demon would have screamed like a hell cat.’

  ‘What now then?’

  ‘He still reeks of evil so I must employ the banishing ritual to purge the atmosphere about him and do all things possible to protect him from Mocata’s influence. Then we will see if this coma shows any signs of lifting.’

  The Duke produced a crutch of Rowan wood then proceeded to certain curious and complicated rites; consisting largely in stroking Simon’s limbs with a brushing motion towards the feet; the repetition of many Latin formulas with long intervals in which, led by the Duke, the two men knelt to pray beside their friend.

  Simon was anointed with holy water and with holy oil. The gesture of Horus was made to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west. The palms of his hands were sprinkled and the soles of his feet. Asafoetida grass was tied round his wrists and his ankles. An orb with the cross upon it was placed in his right hand, and a phial of quicksilver between his lips. A chain of garlic flowers was hung about his neck, and the sacred oil placed in a cross upon his forehead. Each action upon him was preceded by prayer, concentration of thought, and invocation to the archangels, the high beings of Light, and to his own higher consciousness.

  At last, after an hour, all had been accomplished in accordance with the ancient lore and De Richleau examined Simon again. He was warmer now and the ugly lines of distress and terror had faded from his face. He seemed to have passed out of his dead faint into a natural sleep and was breathing regularly.

  ‘I think that with God’s help we have saved him,’ declared the Duke. ‘He looks almost normal now, but we had best wait until he wakes of his own accord; I can do no more, so we will rest for a little.’

  Rex passed his hand across his eyes as De Richleau sank down beside him. ‘I’ll say I need it. Would it be … er . . sacrilegious or anything if I had a smoke?’

  ‘Of course not.’ De Richleau drew out his cigars. ‘Have a Hoyo. It is thoughts, not formalities, which make an atmosphere of good or evil.’

  For a little while the two friends sat silent, the points of their cigars glowing faintly in the darkness until a pale greyness in the eastern sky made clearer the ghostly outlines of the great oblong stones towering at varying angles to twenty feet about their heads.

  ‘What a strange place this is,’ Rex murmured. ‘How old do you suppose it to be?’

  ‘About four thousand years.’

  ‘As old as that, eh?’

  ‘Yes, but that is young compared with the Pyramids and, beside them, for architecture and scientific alignment, this thing is a primitive toy.’

  ‘Those ancient Britons must have been a whole heap cleverer than we give them credit for all the same, to get these great blocks of stone set up. It would tax all the resources of our modern engineers, I reckon. Some of them must weigh a hundred tons apiece.’

  De Richleau nodded. ‘Only the piety of many thousand willing hands, hauling on skin ropes, and manipulating vast levers, could have accomplished it, but what is even more remarkable is that the foreign stones were transported from a quarry nearly two hundred miles from here.’

  ‘What do you mean by “foreign stones”?’

  The stones which form the inner ring and the inner horseshoe are called so because they were brought from a great distance-a place in Pembrokeshire, I think.’

  ‘Horseshoe,’ Rex repeated with a puzzled look. ‘I thought all the stones were placed in rings.’

  ‘It is hardly discernible in the ruins now, but originally this great temple consisted of an outer ring formed of big arches, then a concentric circle of smaller uprights. Inside that, five great separate trilithons of arches, two of which you can see still standing, set in the form of a horseshoe and then another horseshoe of the smaller stones,’

  The Druids used the horseshoe, too, then?’

  ‘ Certainly. As I have told you, it is a most potent symbol indissolubly connected with the Power of Light. Hence my use of it in connection with the swastika and the cross.’

  They fell silent again for some time, then Simon stirred beside them and they both stood up. He slowly turned over and looked about him with dull eyes until he recognised his friends, and asked in a stifled voice where he was.

  Without answering, De Richleau drew him down between Rex and himself on to his knees, and proceeded to give thanks for his restoration. ‘Repeat after me,’ he said, ‘the words of the fifty-first Psal
m.

  ‘ “Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness: according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.

  Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin,

  For I acknowledge my faults and my sin is ever before me.” ‘

  To the end of the beautiful penitent appeal the Duke read in a solemn voice from the Prayer Book by the aid of a little torch while the others repeated verse by verse after him. Then all three stood up and began at last to talk in their normal voices.

  De Richleau explained what had taken place, and Simon sat upon the altar-stone weeping like a child as now, with a clear brain, he began at last to understand the terrible peril from which his friends had rescued him.

  He remembered the party which had been given at his house and that the Duke had hypnotised him in Curzon Street. After that-nothing, until he found himself present in the Sabbat which had been held that night, and even then he could only see vague pictures of it, as though he had not participated in it himself, but watched the whole of the ghastly proceedings from a distance; horrified to the last degree to see a figure that seemed to be himself taking part in those abominable ceremonies, yet mentally chained and powerless to intervene or stop that body, so curiously like his own, participating in that godless scene of debauchery.

  Dawn was now breaking in the eastern sky. as De Richleau placed his arm affectionately round Simon’s shoulders. ‘Don’t take it to heart so, my friend,’ he said kindly. ‘For the moment at least you have been spared, and praise be to God you are still sane, which is more than I dared to hope for when we got you here.’

  Simon nodded. ‘I know-I’ve been lucky,’ he said soberly. ‘But am I really free-for good? I’m afraid Mocata will try and get me back somehow.’

  ‘Now we’re together again you needn’t worry,’ Rex grinned. ‘If the three of us can’t fight this horror and win out we’re not the men I always thought we were.’

  ‘Yes,’ Simon agreed, a little doubtfully. ‘But the trouble is that I was born at a time when certain stars were in conjunction, so in a way I’m the key to a ritual which Mocata’s set his heart on performing.’

  The invocation to Saturn coupled with Mars,’ the Duke put in.

  ‘I’m scared he’ll exercise every incantation in the book to drag me back to him despite myself,’

  ‘Isn’t that danger over? Surely it should have been done two nights ago, but we managed to prevent it then.’

  ‘Ner,’ Simon used his favourite negative with a little wriggle of his bird-like head. ‘That would have been the most suitable time of all, but the ritual can be performed with a reasonable prospect of success any night while the two planets remain in the same house of the Zodiac.’

  ‘Then the longer we can keep you out of Mocata’s clutches, the less chance he stands of pulling it off as the two planets get farther apart,’ Rex commented.

  De Richleau sighed. His face looked grey and haggard in the early morning light. ‘In that case,’ he said slowly, ‘Mocata will exert his whole strength when twilight comes again, and we shall have to fight with our backs to the wall throughout this coming night.’

  Chapter 20

  The Four Horsemen

  Now that the sun was up Rex’s resilient spirit reasserted itself. ‘Time enough to worry about tonight when we are through today,’ he declared cheerfully. ‘What we need most just now is a good hot breakfast.’

  The Duke smiled. ‘I thoroughly agree, and in any case we can’t stay here much longer. While we feed we’ll discuss the safest place to which we can take Simon.’

  ‘We can’t take him anywhere at the moment,’ Rex grinned. ‘Not as he is-with only the car rug and your great-coat to cover his birthday suit.’

  Simon tittered into his hand. It was the gesture which both his friends knew so well, and which it delighted them to see again. ‘I must look pretty comic as I am,’ he chuckled. ‘And it’s chilly too. One of you had better try and raise me a suit of clothes.’

  ‘You take the car, Rex,’ said the Duke, ‘and drive into Amesbury. Knock up the first clothes dealer you can find and buy him an outfit. Have you enough money?’

  ‘Plenty. I was going down to Derby yesterday for the first Spring Race Meeting if this business hadn’t cropped up overnight. So I’d drawn fifty the day before.’

  ‘Good,’ the Duke nodded. ‘We shan’t move from here until you return.’ Then, as Rex strode away across the grass to the Hispano, which was now visible where they had left it in the car-park, he turned to Simon:

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘while Rex is gone. How did you ever get drawn into this terrible business?’

  Simon smiled. ‘Well,’ he said hesitantly, ‘it may seem a queer thing to say, but you are partly responsible yourself.’

  ‘I!’ exclaimed the Duke. ‘What the deuce do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not blaming you, of course, in the least, but do you remember that long chat we had when we were both down at Cardinals Folly for Christmas? It started by your telling us about the old Alchemists and how they used to make gold out of base metals.’

  De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes, and you threw doubt upon my statement that the feat had actually been performed. I cited the case of the scientist Helvetius, I remember, who was bitterly opposed to the pretentions of the Alchemists, but who, when he was visited by one at the Hague in December, 1666, managed to secrete a little of the reddish powder which the man showed him under his finger-nail, and afterwards succeeded in transmuting a small amount of lead into gold with it. But you would not believe me, although I assured you, that no less a person than Sponoza verified the experiment at the time.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Simon. ‘Well, I was sceptical but interested, so I took the trouble to check up as far as possible on all you’d said. It was Spinoza’s testimony that impressed

  me because he was so very sane and unbiased.’

  ‘So was Helvetius himself for that matter.’

  ‘I know. Anyhow, I dug up the fact that Povelius, the chief tester of the Dutch Mint, assayed the metal seven times with all the leading goldsmiths at the Hague and they unanimously pronounced it to be pure gold. Of course there was a possibility that Helvetius deceived them by submitting a piece of gold obtained through the ordinary channels, but it hardly seemed likely that he practised deliberate fraud, because he had no motive. He had always declared his disbelief in alchemy and he couldn’t make any more because he hadn’t got the powder -so there was no question of his trying to float a bogus company on the experiment. He couldn’t even claim any scientific kudos from it either because he frankly admitted that he had stolen the powder from the stranger who showed it to him. After that I went into the experiment of Berigord de Pisa and Van Helmont.’

  ‘And what did you think of those?’ asked the Duke, his lined face showing quick interest in the early morning light.

  ‘They shook my unbelief a lot. Van Helmont was the greatest chemist of his time, and like Helvetius, he’d always said the idea of transmitting base metals into gold was sheer nonsense until a stranger gave him a little of that mysterious powder with which he, too, performed the experiment successfully; and he again had no personal axe to grind,’

  ‘There are plenty of other cases as well,’ remarked the Duke; ‘Raymond Lully made gold for King Edward III of England, and George Ripley gave 100,000 of alchemical gold to the Knights of Rhodes. The Emperor Augustus of Saxony left 17,000,000 Rix dollars and Pope John XXII of Avignon 25,000,000 florins, sums which were positively gigantic for those days. Both were poor men with slender revenues which could not have accounted in a hundred years for such fortunes. But both were alchemists, and transmutation is the only possible explanation of the almost fabulous treasure which was actually found in their coffers after their deaths.’

  Simon nodded. ‘I know. And if one rejects the sworn evidence of men like Spinoza and Van Helmont, why should one believe the people who say they can measure the distance to the stars
, or the scientists of the last century who produced electrical phenomena?’

  The difference is that the mass mind will not accept scientific truths unless they can be demonstrated freely and harnessed to the public good. Everyone accepts the miracle that sulphur can be converted into fire because they see it happen twenty times a day and we all carry a box of matches in our pockets, but if it had been kept as a jealously guarded secret by a small number of initiates, the public would still regard it as impossible. And that, you see, is precisely the position of the alchemist.

  ‘He stands apart from the world and is indifferent to it. To succeed in the Great Work he must be absolutely pure, and to such men gold is dross. In most cases he makes only sufficient to supply his modest needs and refuses to pass on his secret to the profane; but that does not necessarily mean that he is a fraud and a liar. The theory that all matter is composed of atoms, molecules and electrons in varying states is generally accepted now. Milk can be made as hard as concrete by the new scientific process, glass into women’s dresses, wood and human flesh decay into a very similar dust, iron turns to rust, and crystals are known to grow although they are a type of stone. Even diamonds can be made synthetically.’

  ‘Of course,’ Simon agreed, with his old eagerness, so absorbed now in the discussion as to be apparently oblivious of his surroundings. ‘And as far as metals are concerned, they are all composed of sulphur and mercury and can be condensed or materialised by means of a salt. Only the varying proportions of those three Principals account for the difference between them. Metals are the fruits of mineral nature, and the baser ones are still unripe because the sulphur and mercury had no time to combine in the right proportions before they solidified. This powder, or the Philosophers’ Stone as they call it, is a ferment that forces on the original process of Nature and ripens the base metals into gold.’