The Devil Rides Out Page 29

  ‘It’s a horse!’ gasped Richard. ‘A riderless horse.’

  De Richleau groaned. It was a horse indeed. A great black stallion and it had no rider that was visible to them, but he knew its terrible significance. Mocata, grown desperate by his failures to wrest Simon from their keeping, had abandoned the attempt and, in savage revenge, now sent the Angel of Death himself to claim them.

  A saddle of crimson leather was strapped upon the stallion’s back, the pressure of invisible feet held the long stirrup leathers rigid to its flanks, and unseen hands held the reins taut a few inches above its withers. The Duke knew well enough that no human who has beheld that dread rider in all his sombre glory has ever lived to tell of it. If that dark Presence broke into the pentacle they would see him all too certainly, but at the price of death.

  The sweat streaming down his face, Richard held his ground, staring with fascinated horror at the muzzle of the beast, The fleshy nose wrinkled, the lips drew back, barring two rows of yellowish teeth. It champed its silver bit. Flecks of foam, white and real, dripped from its loose mouth.

  It snorted violently and its heated breath came like two clouds of steam from its quivering nostrils warm and damp on his face. He heard De Richleau praying, frantically, unceasingly, and tried to follow suit.

  The stallion whinnied, tossed its head and backed into the bookcases drawn by the power of those unseen hands, its mighty hoofs ringing loud on the boards. Then, as though rowelled by knife-edged spurs, it was launched upon them.

  Marie Lou screamed and tried to tear herself from De Richleau’s grip, but his slim fingers were like a steel vice upon her arm. He remained there, ashen-faced but rigid, fronting the huge beast which seemed about to trample all three of them under foot.

  As it plunged forward the only thought which penetrated Richard’s brain was to protect Marie Lou, Instead of leaping back, he sprang in front of her with his automatic levelled and pressed the trigger.

  The crash of the explosion sounded like a thunderclap in that confined space. Again-again-again, he fired while blinding flashes lit the room as though with streaks of lighting. For a succession of seconds the whole library was as bright as day and the gilded bookbacks stood out so clearly that De Richleau could even read the titles across the empty space where, so lately, the great horse had been.

  The silence that descended on them when Richard ceased fire was so intense that they could hear each other breathing, and for the moment they were plunged in utter darkness.

  After that glaring succession of flashes from the shots, the little rivers of light around the cornice seemed to have shrunk to the glimmer of night lights coming beneath heavy curtains. They could no longer even see each other’s figures as they crouched together in the ring.

  The thought of the servants flashed for a second into Richard’s mind. The shooting was bound to have fetched them out of bed. If they came down their presence might put an end to this ghastly business. But the minutes passed. No welcome sound of running feet came to break that horrid stillness that had closed in upon them once more. With damp hands be fingered his automatic and found that the magazine was empty. In his frantic terror he had loosed off every one of the eight shots.

  How long they remained there, tense with horror, peering again into those awful shadows, they never knew, yet each became suddenly aware that the steed of the Dark Angel, who had been sent out from the underworld to bring about their destruction, was steadily re-forming.

  The red eyes began to glow in the long dark face. The body lengthened. The stallion’s hoof-beats rang upon the floor as it stamped with impatience to be unleashed. The very smell of the stable was in the room. That gleaming harness stood out plain and clear. The reins rose sharply from its polished bit to bend uncannily in that invisible grip above its saddle bow. The black beast snorted, reared high in to the air, and then the crouching humans faced that terrifying charge again.

  The Duke felt Marie Lou sway against him, clutch at his shoulder, and slip to the floor. The strain had proved too great and she had fainted. He could do nothing for her-the beast was actually upon them.

  It baulked, upon the very edge of the pentacle, its fore hoofs slithering upon the polished floor, its back legs crashing under it as though faced with some invisible barrier.

  With a neigh of fright and pain it flung up its powerful head as though its face had been brought into contact with a red-hot bar. It backed away champing and whinnying until its steaming hindquarters pressed against the book-lined wall.

  Richard stooped to clasp Marie Lou’s limp body. In their fear they had all unconsciously retreated from the middle to the edge of the circle. As he knelt his foot caught one of the cups of Holy Water set in the vales of the pentacle. It toppled over. The water spilled and ran to waste upon the floor.

  Instantly a roar of savage triumph filled the room, coming from beneath their feet. The ab-human monster from the outer circle-that obscene sack-like Thing-appeared again. Its body vibrated with tremendous rapidity. It screamed at them with positively frantic glee. With incredible speed the stallion was swung by its invisible rider at the gap in the protective barrier. The black beast plunged, scattering the gutted candles and dried mandrake, then reared above them, its great, dark belly on a level with their heads, its enormous hoofs poised in mid-air about to batter out their brains.

  For one awful second it hovered there while Richard crouched gazing upward, his arms locked tight round the unconscious Marie Lou, De Richleau stood his ground above them both, the sweat pouring in great rivulets down his lean face.

  Almost, it seemed, the end had come. The Duke used his final resources, and did a thing which shall never be done except in the direst emergency when the very soul is in peril of destruction. In a clear sharp voice he pronounced the last two lines of the dread Sussamma Ritual.

  A streak of light seemed to curl for a second round the stallion’s body, as though it had been struck with unerring aim, caught in the toils of some gigantic whip-lash and hurled back. The Thing disintegrated instantly in sizzling atoms of opalescent light. The horse dissolved into the silent shadows.

  Those mysterious and unconquerable powers, the Lord of Light, the Timeless Ones, had answered; compelled by those mystic words to leave their eternal contemplation of Supreme Beatitude for a fraction of earthly time, to intervene for the salvation of those four small flickering flames that burned in the beleaguered humans.

  An utter silence descended upon the room. It was so still that De Richleau could hear Richard’s heart pounding in his breast. Yet he knew that by that extreme invocation they had been carried out of their bodies on to the fifth. Astral plane. His conscious brain told him that it was improbable that they would ever get back. To call upon the very essence of light requires almost superhuman courage, for Prana possesses an energy and force utterly beyond the understanding of the human mind. As it can shatter darkness in a manner beside which a million candle power searchlight becomes a pallid beam, so it can attract all lesser light to itself and carry it to realms undreamed of by infinitesimal man.

  For a moment it seemed that they had been ripped right out of the room and were looking down into it. The pentacle had become a flaming star. Their bodies were dark shadows grouped in its centre. The peace and silence of death surged over them in great saturating waves. They were above the house. Cardinals Folly became a black speck in the distance. Then everything faded.

  Time ceased, and it seemed that for a thousand-thousand years they floated, atoms of radiant matter in an immense immeasurable void-circling for ever in the soundless stratosphere-being shut off from every feeling and sensation, as though travelling with effortless impulse five hundred fathoms deep below the current levels of some uncharted sea.

  Then, after a passage of eons in human time they saw the house again, infinitely far beneath them, their bodies lying in the pentacle and that darkened room. In an utter eerie silence the dust of centuries was falling … falling. Softly, impalpably, like i
nfinitely tiny particles of swansdown, it seemed to cover them, the room, and all that was in it, with a fine grey powder.

  De Richleau raised his head. It seemed to him that he had been on a long journey and then slept for many days. He passed his hand across his eyes and saw the familiar bookshelves in the semi-darkened library. The bulbs above the cornice flickered and the light came full on.

  Marie Lou had come to and was struggling to her knees while Richard fondled her with trembling hands, and murmured; ‘We’re safe, darling-safe.’

  Simon’s eyes were free now from that terrible maniacal glare. The Duke had no memory of having unloosened his bonds but he knelt beside them looking as normal as he had when they had first entered upon that terrible weaponless battle.

  ‘Yes, we’re safe-and Mocata is finished,’ De Richleau passed a hand over his eyes as if they were still clouded. ‘The Angel of Death was sent against us tonight, but he failed to get us, and he will never return empty-handed to his dark Kingdom. Mocata summoned him so Mocata must pay the penalty.’

  ‘Are-are you sure of that?’ Simon’s jaw dropped suddenly.

  ‘Certain. The age-old law of retaliation cannot fail to operate. He will be dead before the morning.’

  ‘But-but,’ Simon stammered. ‘Don’t you realise that Mocata never does these things himself. He throws other people into a hypnotic trance and makes them do his devilish business for him. One of the poor wretches who are in his power will have to pay for this night’s work.’

  Even as he spoke there came the sound of running footsteps along the flagstones of the terrace. A rending crash as a heavy boot landed violently on the woodwork of the french-windows.

  They burst open, and framed in them stood no vision but Rex himself. Haggard, dishevelled, hollow-eyed, his face a ghastly mask of panic, fear and fury.

  He stood there for a moment staring at them as though they were ghosts. In his arms he held the body of a woman; her fair hair tumbled across his right arm, and her long silk-stockinged legs dangled limply from the other.

  Suddenly two great tears welled up into his eyes and trickled slowly down his furrowed cheeks. Then as he laid the body gently on the floor they saw that it was Tanith, and knew, by her strange unnatural stillness, that she was dead.

  Chapter 28

  Necromancy

  ‘Oh, Rex!’ Marie Lou dropped to her knees beside Tanith, knowing that this must be the girl of whom he had raved to her that afternoon. ‘How awful for you!’

  How did this happen?’ the Duke demanded. It was imperative that he should know at once every move in the enemy’s game, and the urgent note in his voice helped to pull Rex together.

  ‘I hardly know,’ he gasped out. ‘She got me along because she was scared stiff of that swine Mocata. I couldn’t call you up this afternoon and later when I tried your line was blocked, but I had to stay with her. We were going to pass the night together in the parlour, but around midnight she left me and then-oh, God! I fell asleep.’

  ‘How long did you sleep for?’ asked Richard quickly.

  ‘Several hours, I reckon. I was about all in after yesterday, but the second I woke I dashed up to her room and she was, dressed as she is now-lying asleep, I figured-in an armchair. I tried to wake her but I couldn’t. Then I got real scared-grabbed hold of her-and beat it down those stairs six at a time. You’ve just no notion how frantic I was to get out of that place and next thing I knew-I saw your light and came bursting in here. She-she’s not dead, is she?’

  ‘Oh, Rex, you poor darling,’ Marie Lou stammered as she chafed Tanith’s cold hands. ‘I-I’m afraid—’

  ‘She isn’t-she can’t be!’ he protested wildly. ‘That fiend’s only thrown her into a trance or something.’

  Richard had taken a little mirror from Marie Lou’s bag. He held it against Tanith’s bloodless lips. No trace of moisture marred its surface. Then he pressed his hand beneath her breast.

  ‘Her heart’s stopped beating,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry, old chap, but-well, I’m afraid you’ve got to face it.’

  ‘The old-fashioned tests of death are not conclusive,’ Simon whispered to the Duke. ‘Scientists say now that even arteries can be cut and fail to bleed, but life still remains in the body.

  They’ve all come round to the belief that we’re animated by a sort of atomic energy-call it the soul if you like-and that the body may retain that vital spark without showing the least sign of life. Mightn’t it be some form of catalepsy like that?’

  ‘Of course,’ De Richleau agreed. ‘It has been proved time and again that the senses are only imperfect vessels for collecting impressions. There is something else which can see when the eyes are closed and hear while the body is being painlessly cut to ribbons under an anaesthetic. All the modern experimenters agree that there are many states in which the body is not wholly alive or wholly dead, but I fear there is little hope in this case. You see we know that Mocata used her as his catspaw, so the poor girl has been forced to pay the price of failure. I haven’t a single doubt that she is dead.’

  Rex caught his last words and swung upon him frantically. ‘God! this is frightful. I-I tried to kid myself but I think I knew it the moment I picked her up. Her prophecy’s come true then.’ He passed his hand over his eyes. ‘I can’t quite take it in yet-this and all of you seem terribly unreal-but is she really dead? She was so mighty scared that if she died some awful thing might remain to animate her body.’

  ‘She is dead as we know death,’ said Richard softly. ‘So what could remain?’

  ‘I know what he means,’ the Duke remarked abruptly. ‘He is afraid that an elemental may have taken possession of her corpse. If so drastic measures will be necessary.’

  ‘No!’ Rex shook his head violently. ‘If you’re thinking of cutting off her head and driving a stake through her heart, I won’t have it. She’s mine, I tell you-mine!’

  ‘Better that than the poor soul should suffer the agony of seeing its body come out of the grave at night to fatten itself on human blood,’ De Richleau murmured. ‘But there are certain tests, and we can soon find out. Bring her over here.’

  Simon and Richard lifted the body and carried it over to the mat of sheets and blankets in the centre of the pentacle, while De Richleau fiddled for a moment among his impedimenta.

  ‘The Undead,’ he said slowly, ‘have certain inhibitions. They can pass as human, but they cannot eat human food and they cannot cross running water except at sunset and sunrise. Garlic is a most fearsome thing to them, so that they scream if only touched by it, and the Cross, of course, is anathema. We will see if she reacts to them.’

  As he spoke he took the wreath of garlic flowers from round his neck and placed it about Tanith’s. Then he made the sign of the Cross above her and laid his little gold crucifix upon her lips.

  The others stood round, watching the scene with horrified fascination. Tanith lay there, calm and still, her pale face shadowed by the golden hair, her tawny eyes now closed under the heavy, blue-veined lids, the long, curved eyelashes falling upon her cheeks. She had the look of death and yet, as De Richleau set about his grim task, it seemed to them that her eyelids might flicker open at any moment. Yet, when the garlic flowers were draped upon her, she remained there cold and immobile, and when the little crucifix was laid upon her lips she showed no consciousness of it, even by the twitching of the tiniest muscle.

  ‘She’s dead, Rex, absolutely dead, De Richleau stood up again. ‘So, my poor boy, at least your worst fears will not be realised. Her soul has left her body but no evil entity has taken possession of it, I am certain of that now.’

  A new hush fell upon the room. Tanith looked, if possible, even more beautiful in death that she had in life, so that they marvelled at her loveliness. Rex crouched beside her, utterly stricken by this tragic ending to all the wonderful hopes and plans which had seethed in his mind the previous afternoon after she had told him that she loved him. He had known her by sight for so long, dreamed
of her so often, yet having gained her love a merciless fate had deprived him of it after only a few hours of happiness. It was unfair-unfair. Suddenly he buried his face in his hands, his great shoulders shook, and for the first time in his life he gave way to a passion of bitter tears.

  The rest stood by him in silent sympathy. There was nothing which they could say or do. Marie Lou attempted to soothe his anguish by stroking his rebellious hair, but he jerked his head away with a quick angry movement. Only a few hours before, in those sunlit woods, Tanith had run her fingers through his curls again and again during the ecstasy of the dawning of their passion for each other, and the thought that she would never do so any more filled him with the almost unbearable grief and misery.

  After a while the Duke turned helplessly away and Simon, catching his eye, beckoned him over towards the open window out of earshot from the others. The seemingly endless night still lay upon the garden, and now a light mist had arisen. Wisps of it were creeping down the steps from the terrace and curling into the room. De Richleau shivered and refastened the windows to shut them out.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘I-er-suppose there is no chance of her being made animate again?’ hazarded Simon.

  ‘None. If there had been anything there it would never have been able to bear the garlic and the crucifix without giving some indication of its presence.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. The vital organs aren’t injured in any way as far as we know, and rigor mortis has not set in yet. I felt her hand just now and the fingers are as flexible as mine.’

  De Richleau shrugged. ‘That makes no difference. Rigor mortis may have been delayed for a variety of reasons but she will be ‘as stiff as a board in a few hours’ time just the same. Of course her state does resemble that of a person who has been drowned, in a way, but only superficially; and if you are thinking that we might bring her back to life by artificial respiration I can assure you that there is not a chance. It would only be a terrible unkindness to hold out such false hopes to poor Rex.’