Delilah suddenly sat up and yelled in absolute terror.
‘No! Ho Gawd!’ she cried. ‘Ho my ruddy Gawd! No! No!’
I tried to push her back down with a soothing hand. ‘It’s all right, Delilah. It’s me. It’s Mr Box. You’re safe now.’
She looked wildly about then grasped my wrist, her ravaged countenance streaming with sweat. ‘Mr Box, sah!’ she rasped, swallowing repeatedly. ‘Hif you’d honly seen it!’
I detached myself from her grasp with some difficulty. ‘Now just take it easy. Tell us what happened.’
Delilah collapsed onto her back, breathing stertorously and shaking her massive head in disbelief. ‘The Professor,’ she gasped. ‘’E come back, hout of the blue. ’Ad words wiv ’is boys and sent ’em horf. Then ’e pulls a pistol on me and says, “Get the girl.”’ Delilah flashed me a look of desperate appeal. “E’d’ve shot me down then hand there, sah, Hi swear it!’
‘It’s all right,’ I soothed. ‘I understand. What happened then?’
‘Well, Hi ’ad to drag Miss Haggie downstairs, sah, and we set horf for the castle. Hi thought we’d perish out ’ere, sah, but the Professor–blast ’is heyes–’e says ’e ’ad heverything ’e needed now hand we must get to the tomb come ’ell hor ’igh water.’
She grabbed the hip flask from me and drained it dry. Whisky bubbled over her cracked lips. ‘“Hit’s my time,” his what ’e said. “I shall be the one the Prince of Darkness favours.”’
I nodded slowly to myself. Flarge crouched down and tried to get his arm around Delilah’s waist in order to help him up. To my astonishment, the old girl lashed out and clocked him on the side of the head.
‘What the hell!’ he ejaculated.
Delilah rolled over and began to box poor Percy about the ears until I dragged her off by the shoulders. ‘No, no! He’s with us now. It’s all right, believe me!’
‘But you said ’e was trying to—’
‘I know, I know! But things have changed, Delilah. Please. Let go of Mr Flarge’s head!’
With great reluctance, my wonderfully brutish slavey did as she was bidden and Flarge flopped into the snow, spluttering and heaving up a little more of his lunch. Delilah shook herself all over and then continued her tale. ‘We got up ’ere, hand then…then…something awful odd ’appened, sah.’
‘Go on.’
Delilah rubbed her jowls. ‘Miss Haggie sets up ha terrible crying, sah, and the Professor tells ’er to shut ’er noise. But she says, “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel it?”, and that’s when I gets this ’orrible feeling. Like when Hi gets one of me black dogs, you know, sah.’
I knew what was coming.
‘Then Miss Haggie points a’ead through the snow. Hi thought someone was coming to meet hus, sah, but the Prof just let out an ’orrible moan and fell to ’is knees. There was somebody there, Mr Box. But it weren’t ’uman! This terrible face! And the eyes on it!’
I patted her hand. ‘I know, I know.’
‘What happened then?’ said Flarge, keeping a wary distance from Delilah.
My servant stared into the falling snow, almost unable to bear the recollection. ‘The Professor pulls out that blessed ’ankie,’ she whispered, ‘and waves it habout. “Hi’m ’ere!” he shouts. “Hi ’ave come!” But the thing just glares at ’im and its eyes glowed red and the Professor started screaming and…I don’t remember no more. Hi’m sorry, sah.’
She sank into herself and began to sob uncontrollably, something I’d never seen in all our years together. Giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, I rose to my feet. ‘I reckon Reiss-Mueller was operating on his own. He kept me alive just long enough to find out the identity of the Perfect Victim then pick-pocketed the relic from me and went in search of his destiny. He was a real expert, as he said. Crazy about the occult. And he wanted the evil power for himself. Unfortunately for him, old Nick seems to have had other ideas.’
Rubbing his near-throttled neck, Flarge came closer, gingerly retrieving the brass binoculars from Reiss-Mueller’s mangled corpse. ‘And the girl?’ he said at last.
‘From the look of these tracks, Mons’s men came along and took Aggie away, leaving Delilah to freeze to death.’
‘And the relic? Why the hell would they leave that?’
I shook my head. Flarge cast a longing glance at the cable above our heads. ‘Well, it’s a dashed hard climb for us now. Night on a bare mountain, what?’
I waved the silk under his nose. ‘What you don’t know is that this thing is also a kind of map. And what the late Professor and I discovered some time ago is that the location of the imprisoned brimstone-lover is located halfway up this mountain. We’re almost there.’
Which was an optimistic statement, to say the least. With the exhausted Delilah slowing us down, it was terrifically hard going, the startling white of the snow coupled with the deep, deep shadows of the treacherous rocks conspiring to confuse our every step.
Trudging on regardless, the snow buffeting us in swirling eddies like miniature cyclones, we made our way up the mountain track as it began to level out.
Machine-cut chips of rock littered the drifts beneath our boots like black threads in ermine and, as I peered through the white curtain of the weather, I made out, just ahead of us, the semicircle of a tunnel entrance.
‘Mons’s work, you reckon?’ I cried.
Flarge frowned, then advanced and began to rub with a gloved hand against the rock wall. A rusted metal sign emerged from the peppering of snow, bearing the letters PTT.
My new ally let out a little laugh. ‘No, old boy. This is something far more powerful. Its pernicious tentacles spread across the globe!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘PTT! Postal Telegraph and Telephones! It’s the Swiss Post Office! Clearly they had cause to dig into this rock long before Mons did!’
‘Very handy for the bugger, I’m sure.’
‘Look ’ere, sah!’ called Delilah, beckoning me over.
I hauled my way through the drifts and looked down to see where Delilah had brushed away the snow, revealing the rusted tracks of a narrow-gauge railway leading into the cave. Dear me but the Swiss were funny beggars. Why the hell would they build a post-office railway inside a mountain? Nevertheless grateful for their eccentricity, I led our little party through the narrow entrance into the tunnel and it was a huge relief to be out of the howling gale. Pushing down the snow-soaked scarf from over my mouth, I took in our new surroundings.
From somewhere close by there came a repetitive throbbing beat, reminiscent of the pounding drums at the F.A.U.S.T. rally. But what drew our attention at once was the ruddy glow coming from up ahead. Gingerly, the three of us advanced until we reached a much more ragged archway, which, judging by the great piles of dusty rock that surrounded it, had only recently been excavated.
There were voices coming from within. As if the place weren’t uncanny enough, it sounded for all the world like a sermon in a country church; low, monotonous grumbling followed by hushed responses. Well I knew, though, that it was some hideously bastardized version of the familiar ritual.
We listened for a time, Delilah getting her breath back, Flarge concentrating on reloading his pistol. At last, I signalled them to follow and we crept stealthily forward to spy out the unfamiliar territory.
The tunnel opened into a cathedral-like chamber, its ceiling festooned with stalactites that dripped like the venom-laden fangs of some great serpent. The place exhibited the signs of its hasty excavation, though vast black drapes had been strung from the rock walls, their surfaces beautifully worked in diabolical designs of crimson, azure and gold. At the centre of the chamber stood a big stone altar, draped in black cloth.
I swallowed hard. Agnes Daye lay sprawled nude on her belly on that altar, seemingly insensible, her arms bound behind her back. Even at that distance I could see the ugly wound in her shoulder, black against the burnt-sugar brown of her smooth flesh. Around her, wreathed in smoking incense,
were scores of equally naked men and women, their faces covered by grotesquely carved animal masks. Pigs, wolves and bug-eyed insects leered out of the miasmic gloom, chanting, writhing and wildly gesticulating.
Only three faces remained uncovered: my sister Pandora, swamped by a floor-length robe of Roman purple, Olympus Mons, who stood at a sort of lectern, and a corpulent figure clothed in black, his multiple chins wobbling over the tight collar. It was Joshua Reynolds, his eyes shining with depraved joy. Once Flarge had told me his tale I’d suspected as much but here was the living proof. Who was better placed to lure Percy Flarge into his nefarious schemes than the head of the Royal Academy himself!
I thought back to that fateful meeting in the Moscow Tea Rooms. Of how he’d taunted me, dismissed me as a relic of a bygone age–whilst all the time I’d been vital to his terrible plans. He’d counted on my skills to hunt down Agnes Daye and return the relic to its rightful place. Rage boiled within me but I tried to suppress it and concentrate instead on the lectern before which Mons was standing. Upon it was stretched what I knew at once to be the remainder of the Jerusalem Prayer, patched together like an exquisite quilt. The left-hand corner was missing.
Mons was naked save for his own black robe, embroidered all over with slithering serpents, chased in silver and bronze. There was a wildly triumphant look in his searchlight eyes as he intoned his blasphemous verses. ‘He comes! He that is Spoken Of! As it is written, so mote it be!’ he bellowed. ‘The Prayer speaks truly! All unknowing he returns the last piece to the whole!’
I was so absorbed by this performance that at first I didn’t notice the cold barrel of an automatic pressing into my neck. Whirling round, I groaned at the sight of amber-shirt guards depriving Flarge of his pistol and others training their machine-guns on Delilah.
With a sharp jab in my side, I was propelled through into the incense-soaked chamber beyond.
Mons paused in his declamation, his ruddy face suffused with delight.
I smiled in clubbable fashion. ‘Oh. You’ve started without us. And I thought I was being fashionably late.’
Mons seemed amused and rubbed his hands like a genial host. ‘Very good, Mr Box. Ever so good.’
‘Welcome Box!’ cried Reynolds.
‘Welcome brother!’ giggled Pandora. ‘At last you’re here. And you’ve fulfilled your side of the bargain admirably.’
Delilah stumped to my side. ‘What the ’ell do they mean, sah?’ she grumbled. ‘What bargain?’
Reynolds rubbed his massive belly in delight. ‘What other kind is there, Box? A Devil’s bargain!’
Pandora licked her carmined lips. ‘Oh, poor Lucy, you have been naive!’
A cold wave of sickness passed over me. What had I done?
‘Haven’t you read your fragment of the Prayer?’ cried Mons, smiling. ‘It was written there the whole time.’
‘Didn’t I say he was getting slow?’ cackled Reynolds.
I gazed around the chamber, feeling utterly hollow. ‘“All unknowing will he come,”’ I quoted in a dull whisper.
Mons nodded feverishly. ‘The Prayer has been separated into fragments all these years but the text itself decrees that the last piece must be restored by one who comes all unknowing. You, my friend, you!’
‘No!’ I cried. ‘No!’
‘We’ve been leading you here all along, Box,’ sneered Reynolds. ‘Why’d you think we made it so damned easy for you to escape?’
‘Easy!’ I exclaimed. ‘I could have lost your blasted relic half a dozen times. Along with my ruddy life!’
Mons shook his head. ‘You were watched over all the time,’ he said, troublingly.
‘Watched over?’ I whispered, voice cracking. ‘By whom?’
Mons stroked his waxed moustache. ‘By the Prince of Darkness himself. Knowing how close we had come to releasing him, he stretched out his terrible influence to ensure you came to no harm.’
As disquieting thoughts go it was up there with the best. But now I understood why that frightful apparition had sent the police off on the wrong trail back in Norfolk, why the bullet had melted into air before my face and why Professor Reiss-Mueller had been rejected by the Dark Master he so longed to serve. It was essential that I, thick-headed dolt that I was, bring back the last fragment of the Prayer without ever knowing I was being used as its hapless courier. What had the cypher said? ‘Box must have the Prayer.’
‘So you’ve put me through all this, all this,’ I seethed, ‘just to bring back that bloody dish-rag for you?’
‘It was ours all along,’ laughed Mons. ‘But the ritual is clear. One of those annoying little codicils that were meant to stop us from raising the Beast. Only one all unknowing could restore the final piece.’
My mind raced back to Hubbard the Cupboard, scrabbling between the bells in that clapboard church what felt like months ago. He’d told me then and there that he was a patsy. Suddenly my mouth was bone dry. ‘You…you planted the handkerchief on Hubbard? You meant me to find it?’
Reynolds nodded gleefully. ‘Oh yes! I must say you’ve more than lived up to the reputation I sought so hard to debase for young Percy there.’
Flarge looked suitably miserable and shook his fist at his former boss. ‘Gad! You utter swine! How could you?’
Reynolds gave an idle flick of the hand. ‘You were useful, Percy, that’s all. You added–what’s the word?–verisimilitude. Box had to believe he was a wanted man so that he wouldn’t suspect for a moment that, all along, we were leading him here.’
Mons took up the tale. ‘We made it a fascinating journey, as full of surprise and co-incidence as any tall tale. There were even surprises for us! Like discovering that the smuggling operation I’d been running across the Atlantic was rather more important than I thought.’
I felt dazed and nauseous. It was all I could do to stay upright. ‘Sal Volatile found the girl, didn’t he?’ I murmured. ‘Hidden away on that rotten old ship of yours. But he kept it a secret. Kept it until—’
‘Until Daley tortured the truth out of him,’ said Mons, evenly. ‘But he’d only got as far as naming the convent of St Bede before he…expired. I must say, it was a most hair-raising time for us. All our plans tottered on the brink of collapse. For without the Perfect Victim, the Prayer was useless.’
I looked over at poor Aggie, naked and insensate on the cold stone of that profane altar. ‘And I brought her to you, didn’t I?’ I whispered, utterly demolished.
‘Practically gift-wrapped,’ tittered Reynolds. ‘With a little help from Professor Reiss-Mueller. Poor sap. He thought he could leapfrog the competition. But it doesn’t work like that. One must play by the rules.’
Pandora straightened up, clearly enjoying the pantomime boldness of her luxuriant gown. ‘We’ve wound you up like a little clockwork mouse, dear brother. And now you’ve come home.’
My sister stepped forward and, after rifling my coat pockets, took the last fragment of the Prayer and handed it with great ceremony to Olympus Mons. He smoothed out the ancient silk, placed it on the frame alongside the rest of the heathen text and, sweeping back his hair, advanced towards the altar where Aggie lay on cold stone.
‘It begins at last!’ he cried. ‘The Devil is loose!’
23
The Sabbat of Olympus Mons
Amber-shirt thugs swooped on Flarge, Delilah and myself, rapidly binding us at the wrists and pushing us down onto our rumps, Pandora supervising.
‘Don’t want you to miss the show, Lucy,’ she said, cheerily, tying off the knots before slipping back into the throng.
‘Damn you,’ I hissed.
‘Too late for that,’ she cried gaily, smoothing some strange and noxious brown unguent onto her chest and calves.
A shattered cross had been rammed, upside down, into the stone of the altar and close by stinking candles fizzled and flared. From their stench I reckoned them to be made from corrupted human fat.
Mons’s acolytes, all of them naked save for the amber
-shirts who guarded us, began to sway and rock on their heels as the filthy incense took hold, a low murmur bubbling in their upturned throats. Pandora thrashed about amongst the throng, grunting horribly, her hands held aloft in gleeful ecstasy, her bare feet scuffing over a carpet of broken Communion wafers–real this time–that had evidently been looted from some church. I saw, to my disgust, that several of the masked lunatics were busily urinating on the Host.
We could only gaze on in absolute horror as the obscene ritual was enacted before us: the most finished piece of blackguardism since Caligula ran amok. Poor Agnes lay sprawled on her belly, rump in the air, whilst Mons pushed back his cape, revealing the strongly muscled contours of his body and intoned his hideous inversion of the Mass, kissing her all over at the points where a congregation would normally have muttered the responses.
As the animalistic grunting and snuffling increased to shattering volume and Mons’s hissed repudiation of Christ and the Virgin topped even that, I became aware of a piercing cry that turned my blood to ice-water.
‘Oh God,’ whispered Flarge. ‘Not that!’
‘What is it?’ I cried.
I could feel Flarge sagging right by me as his head sank onto his chest. ‘It’s all in the rituals they told me of. The slaughter of the innocent.’
I jerked my head around. A slim naked youth of perhaps fifteen years, his head disguised by a wolf-mask, was dragged forward by two of the amber-shirts. Evidently the news that he was to be sacrificed to his Nibs had been only recently relayed. He was jabbering in terror, trying desperately to convince his captors that they must choose another. But the burly guards merely scooped him up and, with awful strength, held him upside down by his shins. His hair, ringing wet with cold sweat, flopped towards the dusty floor and the wolf-mask fell with a sharp clatter, revealing a flushed face red and contorted with fear.
‘For God’s sake, Mons!’ I yelled. ‘Think what you’re doing!’
Pandora was at my side in an instant and I felt her hand crack across my cheek. ‘Silence!’ she shrieked. The Dark One must feed! He must feed!’