Strange Conflict (31 page)

Soon after midnight, feeling that they could not reasonably keep him up any longer, the Duke suggested bed; upon which the Doctor saw them to their rooms, where clean white cotton pyjamas, and two bath-robes to serve as dressing-gowns, had been laid out for them.

When the Doctor had left them they undressed, finding it a great relief to get out of their clothes. In spite of their interest in their host's stories, their burns had caused them so much pain during the whole evening that they had found it difficult to concentrate; but now that they were able to apply some more of the liniment which he had given them this slightly eased the constant smarting.

Having got into her pyjamas and dressing-gown, Marie
Lou slipped out of her room along the verandah to the Duke's as it was there that they had arranged to pass the night together.

She found that he had already pushed the furniture up against the walls and was sweeping clean the bare boards of the floor with the end of one of the woven-grass mats, which he had rolled into a bundle.

‘You're going to attempt to make some sort of pentacle, then?' she said in a whisper.

‘Yes. Anything's better than nothing,' he remarked, holding up a carafe of fresh water which he had just drawn from the bathroom tap. ‘I shall charge this, and providing that we remain awake it should prove sufficient to keep away from us any manifestation which may appear.'

They had no chalk but Marie Lou produced a gold pencil from her dressing-case, and using one side of a pillow-slip as a measure she made little marks on the floor until she had plotted a five-pointed star in which all the sides would be exactly the same length.

De Richleau meanwhile sat with the carafe of water before him and the first and second fingers of his right hand pointing at it from the level of his eye, while he drew down power which flowed invisibly from his mind, through his eye, along his fingers into the carafe. After a few moments he picked it up and, dipping his fingers into it, drew a broad, wet line from one to another of the small crosses that Marie Lou had marked on the floor.

As they put their pillows and clean bedding in the middle of the pentacle, he said: ‘It would be best if we did not discuss this business or make any mention of the others, so that when the enemy arrives—as he almost certainly will do when he thinks that we've had time to fall asleep—he will not gain any information through our conversation. I've never been in such a tricky position before, but I believe our best defence will be to endeavour absolutely to ignore as far as we possibly can anything that may happen. We'll talk about the good old pre-war days, tell such amusing anecdotes as we can think of, and hold competitions like memory-tests to keep our minds occupied. The great thing is to keep on talking as though we're completely unconscious that the enemy is trying to get at us.'

They sat down, cross-legged and facing each other, on
the bedding, immediately under the hanging oil-lamp that lit the room. The house had now fallen silent and the only sound which disturbed the stillness was the croaking of the tree-frogs. The first serious stage of the long ordeal which they were called upon to sustain had begun.

‘First of all,' said the Duke, ‘while our minds are still fresh I think we'd better plot out our night, dividing it into hours in which we're going to talk about certain subjects or play various word-games; then with each hour that passes we shall have something new to occupy our thoughts and not suddenly find ourselves stuck for ideas when our vitality is at its lowest ebb.'

Accordingly they made out a short list. For the first hour they were to talk about their earliest memories. For the second, they would indulge in a battle of wits where each would write down a subject on a piece of paper, and without actually mentioning what they had written would see which of them could first lead the other into talking of the subject chosen. For the third, they were each to recount their recollections of their first love-affair; and so on, right up to six o'clock, soon after which dawn would come and release them from the pentacle.

During the first three-quarters of an hour nothing at all happened, but it was an eerie sensation to be sitting there with the knowledge that a third, invisible, person might also be in the room watching them with quiet malevolence and planning various schemes which might lead to their undoing.

Shortly ofter one the oil-lamp above their heads began to dim. The Duke rose to his feet and turned up the wick, but that made no difference; the light grew fainter and fainter, spluttered a little and went out.

The darkness seemed charged with sinister vibrations
and for the first few moments after the light had died it appeared very black, but as their eyes became accustomed to it the bright starlight outside gradually lit the room for them so that they could still just make out each other's features and the objects of furniture which had been pushed against the wall. They then noticed that the places where the boards had been damped with the charged water now showed as lines with a phosphorescent glow, which was a considerable comfort to them.

From their previous experience they had realised beforehand that they would almost certainly be robbed of light, so they went on talking, quite unperturbed, but each kept their eyes fixed on the other's face, both grimly determined not to be drawn into looking behind them.

After a little while Marie Lou saw a thickening of the shadows over the Duke's shoulder, just outside the pentacle. It slowly condensed into the form of a small black astral, like a dwarf with a very big head; but she knew that it was only a
Utile
‘black' and took no notice of it.

De Richleau, meanwhile, could see over her head, and beyond it, too, the shadows were moving. As he watched they writhed and twisted until they formed a giant smoky hand with fingers that flickered backwards and forwards in a clutching motion, as though to snatch Marie Lou bodily from inside the protective barrier.

Anyone with less knowledge than the Duke might have been scared into shouting a warning to her, but he knew that their only hope of safety lay in complete passivity and he was able to bring into his conversation a little joke which made her laugh, whereupon the big hand suddenly shivered and dissolved.

After that, many strange things came and went outside the limits of the pentacle, obviously sent to try to terrify them into leaving it; but, far from becoming anxious, the Duke was now much easier in his mind. It was apparent that the water charged with power, from which he had made their astral defence, was sufficient without the many other items that he had used at Cardinals Folly to keep the evil manifestations at bay—at least, as long as he and Marie Lou could keep awake. In order to maintain its force, ignoring anything that might be jibbering at them from beyond the barrier, at intervals of about an hour he made
the circle of the star on his hands and knees, remoistening the lines, from the carafe, as he went.

At about half-past two the enemy appeared to realise that they could not be scared and the manifestations abruptly ceased. For nearly two hours nothing happened, and they talked on about a multitude of subjects, de Richleau having soon come to the conclusion that the reason for the evil forces having been withdrawn was because their initiator hoped that if they were not molested further they would grow tired of talking and go to sleep.

Actually, neither of them felt in the least like sleeping, as both were conscious of an ally upon which they had not counted. All the portions of their bodies which had been exposed to the full rays of the sun were glowing with heat, and at times they were tempted to tear off the sun-scorched skin in the hope of securing even momentary relief. The pain had been bad enough when they were sitting out on the verandah talking to Doctor Saturday, but it had eased a little while they were moving about after having come up to their rooms. Then, when they had settled down for the night, it had seemed to become infinitely worse, so they doubted if they could have managed to get any sleep even had they been out of all danger and in the most comfortable beds.

Shortly before half-past four it seemed that the enemy's patience was exhausted or that he had suddenly realised the fact that it was not their intention to go to sleep. In any case, he changed his tactics.

A strange, heady perfume began to filter into the room until the whole atmosphere was laden with it. There was nothing that they could see, nothing tangible at which they could throw their defiant wills; but for that very reason the new manifestation was all the more frightening. The strong scent seemed to dull their senses like a drug, so that their limbs grew heavy; it became difficult for them to hold their heads upright, and they felt an awful yearning to relax and let great waves of sleep pass over them.

De Richleau stretched out his hand and took Marie Lou's. They were speaking much more slowly now and it required a great effort to continue their talk of old memories and irrelevant things; but each time there fell a pause one of them dug his nails into the palm of the other until the pain
jerked back the one who was due to reply and some form of answer was forthcoming.

How long that continued neither of them could tell but it seemed as though they wrestled there for an endless time with the intangible, awful thing that was weighing down upon them, until at last the scent grew fainter and they knew that they had won through that ordeal.

There was another pause, during which they were able to rally their strength a little. Then came the next attack: an attempt to hypnotise them into sleep by sound and at the same time to destroy their power of speech.

Very softly at first, they heard the beating of the Voodoo drums. The drumming went on and on with a terrible monotony that frayed their nerves to ribbons, slowly increasing in volume until the drum-beats were thundering in their ears so loudly that they could barely catch each other's words.

As the sound increased, so they raised their voices, and soon they were shouting at each other with all the power of their lungs. Both felt that they must either be overcome or go mad.

In vain they stuffed their fingers in their ears. It made no difference. The awful, primitive rhythm seemed to stun them with its volume; yet they struggled on. As a counter to the sound the Duke burst into song, and Marie Lou followed his lead. Wildly, crazily, they sang snatches of choruses from old musical-comedy shows, patriotic airs, and marching-songs—anything that entered their heads— sometimes together but often in opposition. They made the night hideous but their tuneless caterwauling enabled them to keep their thoughts concentrated on their own efforts and free of the somnolent effects of the insistent, never-changing rhythm.

Suddenly the drumming ceased and by comparison the silence was overwhelming. Yet it was not complete silence. Faintly, in the distance, a cock was crowing, and the crowing of a cock has the power to break any night-cast spell.

De Richleau drew in a deep breath as he glanced at the window. The stars had paled, grey light now filled the oblongs. Dawn had come.

They stood up and stretched themselves, now free to move outside the makeshift pentacle, that had served them
so well. With their relief a new tiredness had seized upon them; but this was a normal thing which they knew they could fight for hours to come. De Richleau relit the lamp and they smiled at each other.

‘Well done, Princess,' he said. ‘It was pretty ghastly, but we've come through all right. I doubt, though, if I could have done so alone. I could have stood the drums, but not that awful perfume, unless I'd had somebody with me to keep me from going under.'

‘I wonder,' she said slowly, ‘if I'm looking as grim as you.'

They both turned and stared into the dressing-table mirror. That awful night had taken it out of both of them. De Richleau's face was grey and lined, while it seemed that Marie Lou had aged ten years.

He put an arm about her shoulders and shook her gently. ‘Don't worry about that now; it's only a temporary thing, within a few hours you'll have recovered all your beauty.'

As is always the case in the Tropics, the sun rose very quickly. Within quarter of an hour after their ordeal had ended daylight had come, so they decided to go out for a short walk to freshen themselves up. Their burns were still too angry to permit them to bath, but having washed themselves and dressed they went out into the garden and a little way down the road. They did not, however, walk far, as the wound in the Duke's foot had not fully healed and still pained him slightly. When they got back they went into the living-room and collected some magazines. These were all several months old but served to keep them occupied until eight o'clock, when they felt that they could decently go in search of breakfast.

Having found the head house-boy de Richleau went through a pantomime of pouring out and drinking, upon which the dumb Negro pointed to the dining-room, and ten minutes later they were eagerly giving their attention to hot coffee, buttered eggs and a selection of the island's luscious tropical fruit.

They were just finishing when Doctor Saturday joined them. After having wished them good morning, he remarked: ‘You were up very early for people of leisure. I do hope that you didn't sleep badly?'

‘On the contrary,' lied the Duke genially. ‘We found your beds most comfortable; but both my niece and I are
accustomed to getting up early, and your lovely garden tempted us into taking a short walk.'

‘I fear my garden is a poor place by European standards,' the Doctor smiled. ‘We cannot grow your beautiful lawns here, and the garden boys are incurably lazy; it is difficult to get them even to keep it tidy; but I have managed to collect quite a number of interesting flowers and plants. To have examples of as many varieties as possible helps me in my work, you know. Now, what would you like to do today? Please consider me entirely at your disposal.'

‘That is most kind,' de Richleau bowed slightly. ‘We should be delighted to leave ourselves in your hands.'