Strange Conflict (10 page)

‘Wake up, darling, wake up; it's seven o'clock,'

Waiting for nothing more, de Richleau returned to Cardinals Folly, lay down in his Earthly body, remained still for a moment, then, opening his eyes, yawned and sat up.

‘Well,' said Rex, who was seated beside him, ‘how did it go?'

‘Splendidly,' murmured the Duke sleepily. ‘The Admiral is a dear, simple fellow and the leakage certainly does not come through him directly, although there's still just a chance that at times, all unknown to himself, he may be made the tool of some Evil force. Tomorrow night I shall spend with Captain Fennimere, but I do hope that he's not quite so keen on his job, as I positively loathe having to play the part of an Able Seaman in a gale.'

‘What in heck do you mean?' asked the astonished Rex.

De Richleau smiled. ‘I'm quite certain that Sir Pellinore would never believe me if I told him of my night's adventures; but you know the old saying: “There are stranger things in Heaven and Earth than are ever dreamt of in our philosophy”.'

It was still early so the Duke and Rex decided to turn in for an hour or two. Having carefully locked the door of the library behind them and removed the key so that the servants should not see or interfere with the pentacle, they went upstairs to their bedrooms.

In spite of his night's activities, de Richleau did not feel the least bit tired; in fact he felt remarkably fresh, as his sleep from half-past ten until seven o'clock was much longer than that which he usually enjoyed and his tranquillity had not been disturbed by bombs or gunfire. Actually, he had not exerted himself during his astral journey to anything like the same extent as the Admiral, and the only difference between them was that de Richleau had the power to retain full and coherent memory of the things that he had seen and done, whereas the Admiral would wake after a good night's rest remembering nothing of his night's adventures or—at most—a muddled dream in which, perhaps, he had played tennis on his first ship and disported himself not altogether creditably with an oriental lady in the middle of a tennis-court. In the meantime, while they had been absent from their bodies their etheric bodies, which are exact replicas of each person's physical form and remain with them always until death, had been recharged with vitality just as a battery is recharged, since it is to give opportunity for this absolutely essential operation that we sleep each night.

As the Eatons, and any guests who were staying with them, habitually breakfasted in bed, it was not until they
were all gathered in the long drawing-room before lunch that the Duke regaled the others with an amusing account of the Admiral's frolics of which he had been the unsuspected witness.

‘How livid the old boy would be if he knew that you had been snooping on him!' laughed Marie Lou.

De Richleau smiled. ‘He is a very young soul, so I'm quite certain that he wouldn't believe such a thing possible even if he were told about it.'

‘Anyhow, I suppose we can take it that his innocence is fully established?' Richard remarked.

De Richleau shook his head. ‘We are hardly justified in assuming that whoever is communicating with the enemy on the astral plane does so every time he goes to sleep; so if there's nothing suspicious in Captain Fennimere's actions when he is out of his body tonight I shall have to spend further nights checking up on both of them.'

The day was wet and dreary, so they did not go out but spent the afternoon reading and in the casual, amusing conversation of which they never tired when they were together. After dinner they repaired once more to the library and the Duke remade the pentacle. Watches were changed round, so that Simon was to take the first, Rex the second and Richard the third. The same performance was gone through as on the previous evening and by ten o'clock de Richleau, with Simon beside him to keep watch, was tucked up in bed all ready to set out on his astral journey.

He reached London about half-past ten and observed at once that there was a lull in the blitzkrieg. After the previous nights the quiet of the great city seemed a little sinister, as in view of the fact that comparatively few of London's millions could yet be asleep the silence was unnatural.

Although the night was dark and rainy the Duke had no difficulty in identifying the lake in Regent's Park and, coming down near it, he glided northwards, across the canal to the great dark block of North Gate Mansions. There were several doors to the solid, well-built flats but he soon found the hallway that served No. 43 and sailing up the lift-shaft he passed through the door of Captain Fennimere's flat to find that the Captain was off duty and had been entertaining a decidedly attractive young woman to dinner.

From their conversation it was soon clear to the Duke
that she was neither the Captain's wife nor his fiancé; but that their relations had reached a degree of no uncertain intimacy was soon manifest. A little before eleven a mid-servant came in to inquire if there was anything more that the Captain required and having been answered in the negative went off to bed. The Captain then experienced no difficulty in persuading his charming guest to remove her dress, lest it should become creased, and they settled down together very happily on a large sofa which they had drawn up in front of the fire.

The Duke viewed these proceedings with considerable regret; not because he was in any way a Puritan and would willingly have deprived either party of the recreation upon which they were bent, but because he foresaw a long and, for him, tiresome wait before there was any hope of the Captain's going to sleep.

It was hardly likely that these two obviously healthy people would have concluded their somewhat spasmodic and entirely uninteresting conversation for another hour or two, and then it was a foregone conclusion that the sailor would see the lady home; so it was quite on the cards that his astral might not emerge from its mortal frame before two or three o'clock in the morning.

However, as the conversation progressed, the Duke became aware that the couple, although obviously enamoured of each other, were not in the first hectic flush of an amour which might well have led to their remaining embraced until the early hours of the morning. He would have been prepared to wager that the affair had reached a more or less routine stage where enjoyment was had by all, but parting could be borne without heart-ache after reasonable indulgence. He therefore decided to leave them to it and return in half an hour, meanwhile occupying himself with any good work which he could find to do in the big block of mansions.

Several of the flats he visited had been evacuated by their occupants, and others provided a quiet domestic scene which failed to give him the sort of opportunity that he was seeking.

After visiting several he entered a bedroom in which a little girl was tossing sleeplessly, tortured with ear-ache. A few passes over her were sufficient to relieve the pain
and send her to sleep, upon which her astral rose from her body in the form of a middle-aged man with distinguished features; who proved at once to be ‘aware', as before moving off to attend to his own affairs he thanked the Duke most courteously for his kindness.

In another flat de Richleau found an elderly woman with a nasty wound in her shoulder which had been caused by the splinter of an anti-aircraft shell. He sent her to sleep also, but her astral proved to be a dull, almost sightless replica of herself which stood naked and ugly, peering at him suspiciously; upon which he promptly left her and returned to see how Captain Fennimere was getting on.

It proved that the Duke had judged his time well, as the Captain's charming guest was in the process of dressing and the Captain, who was not in the room, returned shortly afterwards with a mirror which he held for her while she tidied her hair. After she had put herself to rights they had a whisky-and-soda and a cigarette apiece, ate some biscuits and embraced with care so that the lady's make-up should not suffer in the process. De Richleau observed with some surprise that as the Captain saw her to the hall door he did not put on his cap and coat but let the girl pass out and stood there smiling ‘good-night' as she went down in the lift.

‘This is strangely ungallant conduct in a naval man,' thought the Duke, ‘and he certainly does not deserve his good fortune.' A moment later, however, he realised that he had misjudged the Captain most unfairly, as the lift did not descend to the ground-floor but stopped two floors below, and the girl got out. Prompted by idle curiosity, de Richleau slid down after her and followed her through the door of a flat which was obviously her home. In the drawing-room an elderly man was sitting reading, and the Duke was considerably amused to hear the Captain's girl friend say brightly as she came in:

‘Hullo, Daddy! I do hope you weren't anxious about me but my taxi took simply ages getting across London in the black-out. Anyhow, Muriel and I spent hours practising on each other with those beastly bandages so I think we've both got a good chance of passing our First-Aid exam, tomorrow.'

‘First-Aid,' murmured the Duke inaudibly. ‘First-Aid,
indeed—you little minx!' Then he left the lovely liar to pass through the ceiling and the flat above into Captain Fennimere's abode.

The Captain was partially undressed and splashing about at the fixed wash-basin in his bathroom. Five minutes later he was in bed and, apparently untroubled by any pangs of conscience over his illicit affair with his neighbour's daughter or by anxieties over Britain's shipping losses, he was very soon asleep.

As he began to snore gently, his astral rose through the bedclothes and de Richleau saw at once that the Captain had reached a much more advanced state than the Admiral. Fennimere's astral immediately took the form of an extremely good-looking woman with a broad forehead and well-modelled chin which denoted intelligence and determination. She was dressed in flowing garments not unlike those that de Richleau himself was wearing and her dark hair was done high on her head in hundreds of small curls, as was the fashion in Roman times.

The Duke turned his face away so that he should not be recognised, but after one swift glance in his direction the Captain's astral made a swift and purposeful exit. From what followed, the Duke knew that they were journeying back in time. When the mist cleared, the lady with the flowing robes was walking in the garden of a Roman villa surrounded by tall cypresses and above a rocky beach which was gently lapped by the blue waters of the Mediterranean. De Richleau instantly lifted himself to a higher level of consciousness so that he would be invisible but remained in the vicinity of the moss-patched balustrade that ran along the terrace, while he kept an eye upon his quarry.

Evidently the Captain's Roman incarnation had been a particularly happy one so he returned to it as the woman he had then been, to renew his mental strength and tranquility of mind; but the Duke felt certain that he would not stay there for very long, as there is always work waiting for those who have knowledge, and such spirits are not apt to be self-indulgent.

His guess proved correct. After sauntering a little among the ilex and sweet-smelling flowering shrubs, while she gazed out with a thoughtful look across the lovely bay, the
Roman lady shook herself slightly, the whole scene disappeared and they came back through time to a very different one.

The crump of bombs and the crashing of anti-aircraft guns suddenly rent the silence and the Duke found that they were above a large city. It was not London, and for the moment he had no means of identifying it, but he assumed that it was somewhere in the Provinces. The Captain's astral went, without hesitation, to a spot where a land-mine had just exploded, and with others who were moving from the upper sphere in that direction he began to help in the work of assisting the newly-dead to find their bearings.

De Richleau saw that the Captain had now taken the form of a hospital nurse, so evidently he liked himself best as a female, but the form he had chosen was admirably suited to his present activities, as for some time after they have been struck down those who have just died nearly always fail to realise that they are dead. Unless they are possessed of the Old Wisdom they know nothing except that they seem to have sustained a severe shock and are very cold, so they lend themselves to the ministrations of a nurse more readily than to any other person and gladly accept the hot soup and warm garments which are provided for them, without having the faintest idea that these are just as much of an astral nature as they themselves.

Judging that as the Captain was obviously a practised helper he would spend the best part of his night at this work of mercy, the Duke decided that the best thing he could do was to employ himself in a similar manner, so he clothed himself in the white garments of a surgeon and set about the business.

It was near dawn when the nurse whom de Richleau was keeping under observation ceased her labours. With other helpers they had gone from one bombed building to another during the night, and for hours after the bombing ceased had busied themselves with the mortally-wounded who passed from Earth life in First-Aid Posts and hospitals.

At last the martyred provincial city faded and the Duke was aware that Captain Fennimere was once more going back in time. When he caught up with him it was to find the Captain, now in male form and dressed with the rich
ness of a wealthy merchant of the eighteenth century, entering a long music-room in a big, well-furnished house. It then became apparent that in one of his incarnations— and probably the last—the Captain had been a most accomplished musician, or possibly even a composer. He sat down at a piano and without hesitation began to play certain soothing and delightful pieces, evidently with the intention of restoring calm to his spirit after the horrors it had witnessed during the night.

Having played for about half an hour, Captain Fennimere stopped abruptly and returned with lightning speed to his mortal body. De Richleau followed, entering the flat at North Gate just in time to see the maid set down the Captain's morning-tea at his bedside as he raised himself sleepily on one elbow. Two minutes later the Duke was back at Cardinals Folly and waking by his own will to tell Richard that all was well with him but that his night's journey had again proved fruitless.