Strange Conflict Read online

  ‘I don’t understand, then, what you’re worrying about.’

  ‘The fact that it has not broken down in one particular direction. The biggest menace that we’re up against at the moment is our shipping losses, and the extraordinary thing is that although the Nazis now seem to have only the vaguest idea of what is going on here in every other direction, they have our shipping arrangements absolutely taped. Naturally, every convoy that sails to or from America is sent by a different route. Sometimes they go right up into the Arctic, sometimes as far south as Madeira, and sometimes dead-straight across; but, whichever way we choose, the Nazis seem to know about it. They meet each convoy in mid-Atlantic after its escort has left it, just as though they were keeping a prearranged appointment.’

  ‘That is pretty grim.’

  ‘Yes. It’s no laughing matter; and to be quite honest we’re at our wits’ end. The Navy is working night and day, and the Air Arm too; but the sea and sky are big places. Our Intelligence people have done their damn’dest—and they’re pretty hot—whatever uninformed people may think about them—but just this one thing seems to have got them beaten.’

  ‘Why should you imagine that I might succeed where the best brains in our Intelligence have failed?’ asked the Duke mildly.

  ‘Because I feel that our only chance now is to get an entirely fresh mind on the subject; someone who isn’t fogged by knowing too much detail and having his nose too close to the charts, yet someone who has imagination and a great reservoir of general knowledge. The Nazis must be using some channel which is quite outside normal espionage methods—the sort of thing to which there is no clue but that anyone with a shrewd mind might happen on by chance. That’s why, when I saw you the other day, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to put this damnable problem up to you.’

  De Richleau stared at Sir Pellinore for a moment. ‘You are absolutely certain that the Nazi Intelligence are not using any normal method of communication in this thing?’

  ‘Absolutely. The fact that all sorts of other vital information does not get through proves it.’

  Then, if they are not using normal methods, they must be using subnormal—or rather, the supernatural.’

  It was Sir Pellinore’s turn to stare. ‘What the blazes d’you mean?’ he boomed abruptly.

  The Duke leant forward and gently knocked the inch-long piece of ash from his cigar into the onyx ash-tray as he said: ‘That they are using what for lack of a better term is called Black Magic.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ gasped Sir Pellinore.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the Duke quietly: ‘I was never more serious in my life.’

  2

  Believe It or Not

  A strange expression crept into Sir Pellinore’s blue eyes. He had known the Duke for many years, but never intimately; only as one of that vast army of acquaintances who drifted across his path from time to time for a brief weekend at a country-house, in the smoking-room of a West End club or during the season at fashionable resorts such as Deauville. He had often heard de Richleau spoken of as a man of dauntless courage and infinite resource, but also as a person whom normal people might well regard as eccentric. The Duke had never been seen in a bowler-hat or wielding that emblem of English respectability, an umbrella. Instead, when he walked abroad he carried a beautiful Malacca cane. In peace-time he drove about London in a huge silver Hispano with a chauffeur and footman on the box, both dressed like Cossacks and wearing tall, grey, astrakhan papenkas. Some people considered that the most vulgar ostentation, while to the Duke himself it was only a deplorable substitute for the sixteen outriders who had habitually preceded his forebears in more spacious days. Sir Pellinore being a broad-minded man had put these little foibles down to the Duke’s foreign ancestry, but it now occurred to him that in some respects de Richleau had probably always been slightly abnormal and that, although he appeared perfectly sane, a near miss from a Nazi bomb might recently have unhinged his brain.

  ‘Black Magic, eh?’ he said with unwonted gentleness. ‘Most interesting theory. Well, if you—er—get any more ideas on the subject you must let me know.’

  ‘I shall be delighted to do so,’ replied the Duke with suave courtesy. ‘And now I will tell you what has just been passing through your mind. You have been thinking: “I’ve drawn a blank here; this fellow’s no good; he’s got a screw loose; probably sustained concussion in an air-raid. Pity, as I was rather hoping that he might produce some practical suggestions for the Intelligence people to work on. As it is, I must remember to tell my secretary to put him off politely if he rings up—one can’t waste time with fellows who’ve gone nuts, while there’s a war on.”’

  ‘Damme!’ Sir Pellinore thumped the table with his huge fist. ‘You’re right, Duke; I admit it. But you must agree that no sane person could take your suggestion seriously.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that, but I would agree that anyone who has no personal knowledge of the occult is quite entitled to disbelieve in it. I assume that you’ve never witnessed the materialisation of an astral force or, to put it into common parlance “seen a ghost” with your own eyes?’

  ‘Never,’ said Sir Pellinore emphatically.

  ‘D’you know anything of hypnotism?’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I’m gifted with slight hypnotic powers myself. When I was a young man I sometimes used to amuse my friends by giving mild demonstrations, and I’ve often found that I can make people do minor things, such as opening up on a particular subject, merely by willing them to do so.’

  ‘Good. Then at least we’re at one on the fact that certain forces can be called into play which the average person does not understand.’

  ‘I suppose so, within limits.’

  ‘Why “within limits”? Surely, fifty years ago you would have considered wireless to be utterly outside such limits if somebody had endeavoured to convince you that messages and even pictures could be transferred from one end of the world to the other upon ether waves.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sir Pellinore boomed. ‘But wireless is different; and as for hypnotism, that’s simply the power of the human will.’

  ‘Ah, there you have it.’ The Duke sat forward suddenly. ‘The will to good and the will to evil. That is the whole matter in a nutshell. The human will is like a wireless set and when properly adjusted can tune in with the invisible influences which are all about us.’

  ‘Invisible influences, eh? No, I’m sorry, Duke, I just don’t believe in such things.’

  ‘Do you believe in the miracles performed by Jesus Christ?’

  ‘Yes. I’m old-fashioned enough to have remained an unquestioning believer in the Christian faith, although God knows I’ve committed enough sins in my time.’

  ‘You also believe, then, in the miracles performed by Christ’s disciples and certain of the Saints?’

  ‘I do. But they had some special powers granted to them.’

  ‘Exactly. Special powers. But I suppose you would deny that Gautama Buddha and his disciples performed miracles of a similar nature?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. I’m sufficiently broad-minded to believe that Buddha was a sort of Indian Christ, or at least a very holy man, and no doubt he, too, had some special power granted to him.’

  ‘Then if you admit that miracles, as you call them—although you object to the word Magic—have been performed by two men of different faiths, living in different countries and in periods hundreds of years apart, you can’t reasonably deny that other mystics have also performed similar acts in many portions of the globe and, therefore, that there is a power existing outside us which is not peculiar to any religion but can be utilised if one can get into communication with it.’

  Sir Pellinore laughed. ‘I’ve never looked at it that way before, but I suppose you’re right.’

  De Richleau poured another portion of the old brandy into his friend’s glass as Sir Pellinore went on more slowly.

  ‘All the same, it doesn’t follow that becaus
e a number of good men have been granted supernatural powers there is anything in Black Magic.’

  ‘Then you do not believe in witchcraft?’

  ‘Nobody does these days.’

  ‘Really? How long d’you think it is since the last trial for witchcraft took place?’

  ‘Two hundred years.’

  ‘No. It was in January 1926, at Melun, near Paris.’

  ‘God bless my soul! D’you mean that?’

  ‘I do,’ de Richleau assured him solemnly. ‘The records of the court are the proof of it; so, you see, you are hardly accurate when you say that nobody believes in witchcraft in these days; and many, many thousands still believe in a personal Devi.’

  ‘Central European peasants, perhaps, but not educated people.’

  ‘Yet every thinking man must admit that there is such a thing as the power of Evil.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My dear fellow, all qualities have their opposites, like love and hate, pleasure and pain, generosity and avarice. How could we recognise the goodness of Jesus Christ, Lao-Tze, Ashoka, Marcus Aurelius, Francis of Assisi, and thousands of others, if it were not for the evil lives of Herod, Cesare Borgia, Rasputin, Landru and the rest?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Then, if an intensive cultivation of Good can beget strange powers, is there any reason why an intensive cultivation of Evil should not beget them also?’

  ‘That sounds feasible.’

  ‘I hope I’m not boring you; but just on the off-chance that there might be something in my suggestion that the Nazis are using occult forces to get information out of this country, I think it is really important that you should understand the theory of the occult, since you appear to know so little about it.’

  ‘Go ahead, go ahead.’ Sir Pellinore waved a large hand. ‘Mind you, I don’t say that I’m prepared to take for granted everything you may tell me, but you certainly won’t bore me.’

  De Richleau sat forward. ‘Very well; I’ll try and expound to you the simple rudiments of the Old Wisdom which has come down to us through the ages. You will have heard of the Persian myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman, the eternal powers of Light and Darkness, said to be co-equal and warring without cessation for the good or ill of mankind. All ancient Sun and Nature worship—Festivals of Spring and so on—were only an outward expression of that myth, for Light typifies Health and Wisdom, Growth and Life, while Darkness means Disease and Ignorance, Decay and Death.

  ‘In its highest sense Light symbolises the growth of the spirit towards that perfection in which it becomes Light itself. But the road to perfection is long and arduous, too much to hope for in one short human life; hence the widespread belief in Reincarnation: that we are born again and again until we begin to transcend the pleasures of the flesh. This doctrine is so old that no man can trace its origin, yet it is the inner core of Truth common to all religions at their inception. Consider the teaching of Jesus Christ with that in mind and you will be amazed that you have not realised before the true purport of His message. Did He not say that the Kingdom of God was within us? And when he walked upon the waters he declared: “These things that I do ye shall do also, and greater things than these shall ye do, for I go unto my Father which is in Heaven”; meaning most certainly that he was nearing perfection but that others had the same power within each one of them to do likewise.’

  De Richleau paused for a moment, then went on more slowly: ‘Unfortunately the hours of the night are still equal to the hours of the day, so the power of Darkness is no less active than when the world was young, and no sooner does a fresh Master appear to reveal the Light than Ignorance, Greed and Lust for Power cloud the minds of his followers. The message becomes distorted and the simplicity of the Truth submerged and forgotten in the pomp of ceremonies and the meticulous performance of rituals which have lost their meaning. Yet the real Truth is never entirely lost, and through the centuries new Masters are continually arising either to proclaim it or, if the time is not propitious, to pass it on in secret to the chosen few.

  ‘Apollonius of Tyana learned it in the East. The so-called heretics whom we know as the Albigenses preached it in the twelfth century throughout Southern France until they were exterminated. Christian Rosenkreutz had it in the Middle Ages; it was the innermost secret of the Order of the Templars, who were suppressed because of it by the Church of Rome; the alchemists, too, searched for and practised it. Only the ignorant take literally their struggle to find the Elixir of Life. Behind such phrases, designed to protect them from the persecution of their enemies, they sought Eternal Life, and their efforts to transmute base-metals into gold were only symbolical of their sublimation of matter into Light. And still today, while the bombing of London goes on about us, there are mystics and adepts who are seeking the Way to Perfection in many corners of the earth.’

  ‘You honestly believe that?’ remarked Sir Pellinore with mild scepticism.

  ‘I do.’ De Richleau’s answer held no trace of doubt.

  ‘Granted that there are such mystics who follow this particular Faith which is outside all organised religions, I still don’t see where Black Magic comes in.’

  ‘Let’s not talk of Black Magic, which is associated with the preposterous in our day, but of the Order of the Left-Hand Path. That, too, has its adepts, and just as the Rein-incarnationists scattered all over the world are the preservers of the Way of Light, the Way of Darkness is perpetuated in the horrible Voodoo cult which had its origin in Madagascar and has held Africa, the Dark Continent, in its grip for centuries and spread with the slave trade to the West Indies.’

  A stick of bombs crumped duty in the distance and Sir Pellinore smiled. ‘It’s a pretty long cry from the mumbo-jumbo stuff practised by the Negroes of the Caribbean to the machinations of this damn’d feller Hitler.’

  ‘Not so far as you might suppose. Most of the black man’s Magic is crude stuff but that does not affect the fact that certain of these Voodoo priests have cultivated the power of Evil to a very high degree. Among whites, though, it is generally the wealthy and intellectual, who are avaricious for greater riches or power, to whom it appeals. In the Paris of Louis XIV, long after the Middle Ages were forgotten, the Black Art was particularly rampant. The poisoner, La Voisin, was proved to have procured over fifteen hundred children for the infamous Abbé Guibourg to sacrifice at Black Masses. He used to cut their throats, drain the blood into a chalice and then pour it over the naked body of the inquirer which lay stretched upon the altar. I speak of actual history, and you can read the records of the trial that followed, in which two hundred and forty-six men and women were indicted for these hellish practices.’

  ‘Come, come; that’s all a very long time ago.’

  ‘If you need more modern evidence of its continuance there is the well-authenticated case of Prince Borghese. He let his Venetian palazzo on a long lease, expiring as late as 1895. The tenants had not realised that the lease had run out until he notified them of his intention to resume possession. They protested, but Borghese’s agents forced an entry. What d’you think they found?’

  ‘Lord knows.’

  ‘That the principal salon had been redecorated at enormous cost and converted into a Satanic Temple. The walls were hung from ceiling to floor with heavy curtains of scarlet-and-black silk damask to exclude the light. At the further end, dominating the whole room, there was stretched a large tapestry upon which was woven a colossal figure of Lucifer. Beneath it an altar had been built and amply furnished with the whole liturgy of Hell; black candles, vessels, rituals—nothing was lacking. Cushioned prie-dieus and luxurious chairs of crimson-and-gold were set in order for the assistants and the chamber was lit with electricity fantastically arranged so that it should glare through an enormous human eye.

  ‘If that’s not enough I can give you even more modern instances of Satanic temples here in London; not so luxuriously furnished, perhaps, but having all the essentials for performing Black Masses. There was one in Earl’s Cour
t after the 1914-1918 War, there was another in St. John’s Wood as recently as 1935, which I myself had occasion to visit, and less than three years ago there was one in Dover Street, where a woman was flogged to death during one of the ceremonies.’

  De Richleau hammered the table with his clenched fist. ‘These are facts that I’m giving you—things I can prove by eye-witnesses still living. Despite our electricity, our aeroplanes, our modern scepticism, the Power of Darkness is still a living force, worshipped by depraved human beings for their unholy ends in the great cities of Europe and America to this very day.’

  Sir Pellinore shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I’m quite prepared to take your word for all this, and, of course, I have myself heard from time to time that such things go on, even to an occasional murder the motive for which remains undiscovered by the police. But, quite honestly, I feel that you’re putting an entirey wrong interpretation upon the facts. Such parties are simply an excuse for certain wealthy and very decadent people, of which a certain number exist in every great city, to indulge in deliberately planned orgies where they can give themselves up to the most revolting sexual practices. Such circles are, in fact, very exclusive vice-clubs, generally run by clever crooks who make an exceedingly good thing out of them. I don’t for one moment doubt that you’re right about the trimmings, but in my view the ceremonial part of it is simply a mental stimulant which serves to get these people into the right frame of mind for the abominable licence in which they intend to indulge later the same night when they’ve got their clothes off. I don’t believe that these so-called Satanists could harm a rabbit by exercising supernatural powers in the manner that you suggest.’

  ‘That is a pity,’ replied the Duke; ‘because this is no question of my endeavouring to convince you that I am right for the mere pleasure of triumphing in a purely academic argument. You came to me this evening with a problem which it is vital that we should solve if we are to get the better of the Nazis. I put up what I consider to be a possible solution to that problem. If you brush it aside as nonsense, yet it later proves that I am right, entirely through your reluctance to accept what may sound a fantastic solution we shall be in a fair way to lose the war, or at least it will be prolonged to a point where grave hardship will be inflicted upon our entire people. Either my theory is a possible one, or it is not. If it is possible, we can take steps to counter the menace. Therefore, whether you like it or not, you have laid it upon me as a national duty to convince you that Magic is an actual scientific force and may, therefore, be employed by our enemies.’