Strange Conflict Read online

  ‘No, Richard,’ de Richleau shook his head. ‘We brought quite enough trouble on Marie Lou last time we broke a lance against the Devil, and with Fleur in the house I wouldn’t even consider it.’

  ‘Fleur’s not in the house; she’s sharing a governess with another little girl, the daughter of friends of mine who live up in Scotland. And remember, as Marie Lou was involved last time she knows as much about this sort of thing as Simon, Rex or myself.’

  De Richleau considered for a moment. He knew that Richard’s beautiful little wife had an abundance of sound common sense as well as an extraordinarily strong will and that, as had often happened before, her counsel might be most useful to them. This was Total war, and while women everywhere were risking their lives to carry on the nation’s work during the blitzkrieg there could be no case for exempting a woman from this very curious job of war work in which she could be just as effective as any man. At length he said:

  ‘Thanks, then, Richard; we’ll accept your offer. The next thing is for me to meet the man at the Admiralty who decides the routes that the convoys are to take.’

  Sir Pellinore looked a little startled. ‘I, er …’ he began, ‘I hardly feel that we can let the Admiral in on what you propose to do. You’ve made me feel that it’s just possible that you’ve hit the nail on the head as to the manner in which this leakage of information is reaching Germany, but I’m afraid you’d find him a much more sticky proposition.’

  ‘It’s not necessary,’ smiled the Duke. ‘All I need is to meet him socially for an hour or two.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy. I’ve already arranged for him to lunch with me tomorrow because I felt pretty confident that I could interest you in this business tonight; and as no time must be lost in getting to work I was hoping that you would join us so that you could put up any questions you might have.’

  ‘Splendid. A general discussion on the subject would, in any case, prove helpful, and of course it’s still quite possible that my theory that the occult is being used is entirely wrong.’ De Richleau looked round at the others. ‘Then, if you’re agreeable, we’ll all go down to Cardinals Folly in the afternoon.’

  They sat talking together for another half-hour, then there came a lull in the blitzkrieg so de Richleau’s guests decided to set off for home before it flared up again.

  On the following day the Duke lunched with the Admiral and a naval staff-captain, at Sir Pellinore’s mansion in Carlton House Terrace. The Admiral was square-chinned, paunchy and bald; the Captain a merry-eyed man with sparse brown hair and a fine, broad forehead.

  They held a long discussion, and afterwards examined a number of large-scale charts of the Western and Northwestern Approaches which the naval officers had brought with them. The situation was considerably worse than de Richleau had imagined and he questioned the Admiral as to how many people actually had access to each route planned before it was handed to the officer commanding a convoy.

  The Admiral jerked his pink, bald head towards the Captain. ‘Nobody except Fennimere and myself. We plot the routes together, taking into consideration the latest information regarding enemy forces in each locality; then Fennimere writes the orders out by hand, so that there is no question of even a confidential typist being involved. The orders are sealed in a canvas-lined envelope which is weighted with lead so that it can be thrown into the sea and will sink immediately in the event of an emergency. It is then locked in a steel despatch-box which Fennimere personally takes to the port from which the convoy is proceeding. He hands it over to the officer commanding the escort, who in turn hands it to the officer commanding the convoy—but only when the convoy is already several hundred miles out and the escort is about to return to port. In this manner even the officer commanding the convoy cannot possibly know what route he is to take until he is actually at sea, since the sealed orders do not even pass into his possession until the escort is about to leave him.’

  ‘That certainly narrows the field,’ said the Duke, ‘and I don’t see how you could possibly take any greater precautions.’

  The Admiral shrugged wearily. ‘Neither do I. The problem as to how they get their information defeats me utterly, and you’ll be doing us an immense service if only you can put your finger upon the place where the leakage occurs.’

  ‘You see,’ added Fennimere, ‘even if one of the officers commanding a convoy were a traitor and had a secret wireless apparatus by which he could inform the enemy of his approximate position twenty-four hours after the escort had left him, that does not solve the problem, because it postulates that every officer commanding a convoy is a traitor—which is manifestly absurd.’

  ‘Yes, I appreciate that,’ the Duke agreed. ‘Therefore the leakage must occur in London, where the routes of all convoys are settled. May I have your private address?’

  The Captain looked a little surprised, but the Admiral smiled. ‘He’s perfectly logical in assuming that it must be you or I, Fennimere, and since the Intelligence people have been shadowing both of us for weeks what does one more sleuth matter?—in fact the more the better. If only they would provide a couple of attractive young women to sleep with us each night our innocence would be proved conclusively.’

  ‘Of course you’re right, sir,’ Fennimere laughed. ‘I’m quite used to tripping over detectives wherever I go now, so if His Grace pops out of the bathroom cupboard one morning I shan’t mind a bit.’ He turned to de Richleau. ‘I’ve taken a temporary lease of a flat, No. 43, North Gate Mansions, Regent’s Park, and the Admiral has a house, No. 22, Orme Square, Bayswater.’

  ‘If you’d care to look over the place any time,’ the Admiral suggested, ‘I’ll leave word with my wife that you’re to have the run of it for as long as you like.’

  ‘The same goes for my flat,’ added the Captain.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen, but I only asked for your private addresses in case I wanted to get in touch with you urgently,’ lied the Duke smoothly.

  An hour later he was with Rex, Simon and Richard in the latter’s car running through the half-empty streets of bomb-torn London on the way to Worcestershire.

  The last part of their journey had to be done in the blackout, but Richard knew the way so well that when they left the great arterial road he had no difficulty in twisting through the narrow country lanes until he drove through the open park-gates and pulled up in front of his lovely country home.

  The east wing of the rambling old house was very ancient and said to have been at one time part of a great abbey, but centuries later these thick-walled remains had been built on to, while in recent years Richard and his lovely wife, the some-time Princess Marie Louise Héloise Aphrodite Blankfort De Cantezane de Schulemoff, had spared neither pains nor money to make its interior both comfortable and beautiful. The heavy, oak, nail-studded door was no sooner opened by Malin, Richard’s elderly butler, than Marie Lou herself came running forward to welcome them.

  She was a tiny person with chestnut curls, a heart-shaped face and big, violet eyes which gave her a certain resemblance to a Persian kitten. In spite of her diminutive size and her slim feet, hands, wrists and ankles, she was plump in all the right places, so that de Richleau often said that she was the most exquisite creature that he had ever seen, and many people nicknamed her ‘Richard’s Pocket Venus’. Their devotion to each other had remained absolute ever since the days when he had found her among the Siberian snows and brought her out of the Forbidden Territory to be his wife.

  They embraced as though they had not met for months, and when at last he released her she said breathlessly: ‘Darling, I only had your telegram an hour ago, although you send it off last night. None of the rooms are ready yet, but the maids are busy lighting the fires and putting bottles in the beds, and it’s too lovely for words to have you all here again.’ As she spoke she tiptoed from one to the other, giving each a swift kiss upon the cheek.

  Malin had gone out to unload the car as the Duke smiled down at her. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well, P
rincess, because I have a somewhat unusual request to make. It is that I should be allowed to sleep in the library.’

  ‘Greyeyes, darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘Surely you, of all people, aren’t afraid of bombs! We haven’t had one within miles of Cardinals Folly, so you’ll be perfectly safe in your old room upstairs; but of course you can sleep in the library if you prefer.’

  ‘No, it’s not fear of bombs that has brought me out of London, my dear, but something much more desperate.’

  Her face suddenly went serious and she nodded quickly. ‘All right, then. But come inside. At least I’ve had time to mix the cocktails.’

  Richard made a grimace as he followed her into the long, low drawing-room which in summer had such a lovely view through its french windows over the terraced garden. ‘I’m afraid our luck’s out, darling; we’re all on the wagon.’

  She stopped dead and her eyes grew rounder, showing just a trace of fear as she stared at de Richleau. ‘The library—no drinks!—you—you don’t mean that one of you is threatened again by something awful from the other side?’

  ‘No,’ the Duke reassured her, ‘but it has fallen to us to break a lance against Hitler on the astral.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ she said suddenly, ‘I don’t like it.’

  Richard put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Darling, the Blacks are getting information into Germany by occult means—at least, that’s what we believe—and someone’s got to go out from Earth to try to stop them. As you know very well, one needs quiet and peaceful surroundings for work of that kind, so I felt sure that I was doing what you would have wished in telling Greyeyes that he must come and stay with us while he wages this strangest of all battles for Britain.’

  She spread out her hands in a little foreign gesture. ‘Of course you were right. I should never have forgiven him if I’d learnt afterwards that he had gone elsewhere. I only meant that anything to do with the occult is so damnably dangerous.’

  ‘After the way you stuck it with your mobile canteen in Coventry all through the night that the Nazis turned the place into a living Hell, I’d come to the conclusion that you’d ceased to fear anything,’ Richard said seriously.

  She squeezed his hand. ‘That was different, darling. What could any of us do but carry on? And at least we knew the worst that could happen—whereas on the other side there are some horrors that one can’t even visualise. I’m frightened for you and Rex and Simon more than for myself, because out of my body I’m much stronger than most men.’

  De Richleau took her free hand and kissed it. ‘I knew I could count on you, Princess, and, if need be, now we’re together we’ll be able to form a cohort of five warriors of the Light.’

  Rex had picked up the cocktail-shaker and was smelling its contents. ‘What a lousy break!’ he murmured. ‘Pineapple-juice and Bacardi rum, my favourite cocktail, yet I mustn’t drink any.’ He glanced at Marie Lou. ‘I’ll bet fifty bucks, too, that Greyeyes means to crack down hard on anything good you may have thought up for our dinner.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ she exclaimed ruefully. ‘If I’d had the least warning of this I should have known that he’d want us all to become vegetarians for the time being. As it is, I’ve just been getting all sorts of lovely things out from my emergency war stores—foie gras, peaches in Benedictine, tinned cream …’

  ‘Now, stop making my mouth water, you little hoarder!’ Rex waved her into silence with one of his huge hands.

  ‘Hoarder—nothing!’ laughed Richard. ‘All our supplies were bought months before the war, when the seas were still open to replace them and the fact of buying extra stuff was good for trade. Why the Government didn’t run a campaign urging everybody to buy all the tinned things they could, while the going was good, I can’t imagine. Innumerable little private stocks scattered in thousands of homes all over the country would have proved an absolute blessing now that the nation’s on short rations.’

  ‘One man I know did, in the spring of 1939,’ said the Duke. ‘He was at that time writing for the Sunday Graphic and his theory was that everybody who could possibly afford to lay in stocks, however small, should do so; because then, if we had to go to war and a time of shortage came, richer people would be partially provided for and that would leave much more in the shops for the poorer people. But the only encouragement he got from the Ministry of Home Security was a semi-official announcement that there was no harm in people laying in emergency stores. But I don’t doubt that the people who took his tip are grateful to him this winter.’

  ‘Well, we just mustn’t think about all those nice things we were going to have for dinner,’ said the practical Marie Lou. ‘Instead, you’d better tell me what you’d like.’

  ‘No meat, or soup with meat-juice in it,’ said the Duke; ‘a little fish, if you have it, and vegetables with fruit or nuts afterwards.’

  Rex groaned, but Simon said jerkily with a grin at Marie Lou: ‘Left a parcel with Malin—five Dover soles—knew what we were in for, so thought they might come in useful.’

  ‘Simon, darling, you always were the most thoughtful person in the world, bless you. Except for tinned things there’s not a scrap of fish in the house; but I can manage the fruit and nuts.’ Marie Lou hurried away to give fresh orders for their dinner while Richard led the men upstairs to park their things and wash.

  When they came down again Richard said to the Duke: ‘Why do you want to sleep in the library? D’you mean to erect a pentacle there, as you did before?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it would be easier for you to strip the library than one of the bedrooms upstairs and to keep it locked up so that the servants don’t go into it in the daytime. I only wish that I’d had a chance to get into proper training for this business, but every day is precious, so I mean to start tonight.’

  ‘That’s taking a pretty big risk, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. As the Blacks can’t possibly know yet that we intend to go out against them there’s not the least likelihood of their attacking me on the astral or endeavouring to harm my body while I’m out of it. The trouble will start if I once get on to anything and they happen to notice me snooping about. After all, this is just the same as any other investigation except that it is to be carried out on a different plane. If we were dealing with enemy agents in their physical bodies I should probably get myself a job in the Admiral’s house, and nobody operating there would take much interest in me until they noticed that I was following them or prying into matters which were no concern of mine. A really good detective is rarely spotted until he has his man in the bag, therefore I’ve good reason to hope that nobody will tumble to what I’m up to till I’ve found out what I want to know; and once I’ve done that we should be in a position to take counter-measures. Just as a safeguard I propose that you three should take turns to sit up and watch while I sleep, as all of you know enough to help me to get back to my body quickly if I run into any trouble, and, in addition, you’ll be on hand in the unlikely event of my being abruptly awakened by a burglar or a bomb.’

  ‘Right-oh,’ said Richard. ‘Directly we’ve dined we’ll set about clearing the library.’

  Thanks to the Dover soles which Simon had had the forethought to purchase before they left London that afternoon, their simple meal, washed down with water, was palatable beyond their expectations. When they had finished, Richard gave instructions to his butler that on no account were they to be disturbed and they all migrated to the big library.

  The library, octagonal in shape and slightly sunken below ground level, was the principal room in the oldest part of the house. Comfortable sofas and large armchairs stood about the uneven polished oak of the floor, a pair of globes occupied two angles of the book-lined walls, and a great oval, mahogany writing-table of Chippendale design stood before the wide french window. Owing to its sunken position the lighting of the room was dim in daylight yet its atmosphere was by no means gloomy. A log-fire upon a twelve-inch pile of ashes was kept burning in the wide fireplace all th
rough the year and at night when the curtains were drawn—as they now were—the room was lit with the soft radiance of concealed ceiling-lights which Richard had installed. It was a friendly, restful place, well suited for quiet work or idle conversation.

  ‘We must strip the room of furniture, carpets—everything,’ said the Duke, ‘and I shall need brooms and a mop to polish the floor.’

  The men then began moving the furniture out into the hall while Marie Lou fetched a selection of implements from the housemaid’s cupboard. For a quarter of an hour they worked in silence, until nothing remained in the big library except the serried rows of gilt-tooled books.

  ‘I would like the room to be gone over thoroughly,’ the Duke smiled at Marie Lou, ‘particularly the floor, since evil emanations can fasten on the least trace of dust to assist their materialisation, and I may, if I get into trouble, be chased back here.’

  ‘Certainly, Greyeyes dear,’ said Marie Lou, and with the help of the others she set about dusting, sweeping and polishing while de Richleau went out to collect a suit-case holding his ritual paraphernalia and a number of large parcels containing numerous items which he had purchased that morning. As the Duke unpacked them the others saw that they consisted of several pillows, rubber Li-Los, silk dressing-gowns, sets of pyjamas and bedroom slippers.

  ‘Whatever have you brought all those things for?’ asked Marie Lou.

  ‘Surely you remember that nothing which is even slightly soiled must be within the pentacle,’ he replied. ‘Impurities are bound to linger in bedding and clothes even if they have only been used for a few hours, and it is just upon such things that elementais fasten most readily; but I’m relying on you to provide us with clean sheets, blankets and pillowcases.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said gravely. ‘I’ll go up and raid the linen-cupboard. How many sets do you want?’

  ‘Only one for the moment as I am going out alone tonight. The others will be able to sleep in their own beds except during the few hours that each of them will be on watch here beside me.’