Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

'Why should you think that?' Clarissa asked.

''Because, having once established a rapport, the hypnotist can at any future time place the subject Under his control again, even if it be against her wish. I beg you, most earnestly, Clarissa, to have no further dealings with this man.'

She shrugged, 'Since you wish it, I'll hold no further private converse with him tonight or tomorrow, and he'll be leaving here, on Monday.'

'Yes; and God be thanked for that,' said the Colonel bluntly. 'Saving your presence, Sheridan, I've formed no liking for this friend of yours.'

'Oh, he's well enough.' The ruddy-​faced bon-​viveur poured another great dollop of thick cream upon his strawberries, and went on: 'A little brusque and dictatorial in his manner, I'll admit. But he has so able a brain that, although he is not a diplomat de carriere, I think the Venetians did well in their choice of him as a special envoy. You'd not have been aware of it, as until recently he has been in this country only as a private person; but their Senate sent him to report on the internal state of the nation, and before we left London yesterday morning he presented his papers at the Foreign Office. I have not found him an easy companion to take about, but his is an interesting personality.'

'Perhaps.' commented Georgina, 'but a far from engaging one, and he treats that poor wife of his abominably. I find him, too, a mass of disconcerting contradictions. He is a glutton for food, yet drinks nought but water. When conversing with him one forgets his ugliness, then those eyes of his suddenly send a shiver down one's spine. He is punctilious in all normal courtesies but, without warning, makes some remark the rudeness of which, were I not his hostess, I would not excuse. To look at, no one could take him for anything but an ugly middle-​aged man, yet when with him there are times when I catch myself thinking of him as a self-​willed querulous old woman. And now, although Sherry tells us that he is a hard-​headed man of affairs, he springs upon us the claim to be a mystic, capable of exercising occult power.'

Beckford looked across at Sheridan. 'I gather, Sir, that since his coming to England you have been much in his company. During that time has he given you many indications that he concerns himself with magic?'

'Nay, not one. Our talk has all been of either politics or the stage.'

'My love,' Esther Sheridan put in. 'Would you not count his having one night, while staying with us at Polesden, gone out to gather herbs by moonlight?'

He blew her a kiss. 'Light of my life, it seems that he did not confide to you, as he did to me, that they were for a concoction which relieves a colic from which he suffers periodically.'

' Tis possible he did not wish to tell you that he required them to work some spell,' Clarissa suggested.

Droopy laughed. 'Then you may burn me for a witch. In my collection I've a sufficient number of strange drugs to kill, cure or temporarily make mad someone for every day of the year; but the drug does not exist that would counteract the force of gravity and enable a person to become suspended in mid-​air. That the fellow can practise hypnotism we must now agree; but, with no offence to you, Sheridan, I believe him to be a rogue. I'd vow his attempt will be no honest one; he'll use some subtle trick by which he hopes to cheat us of our money.'

'No offence taken, my Lord,' came the cheerful reply. 'But it has never yet been accounted reprehensible to win a wager by the use of one's wits. For example, there was that amusing affair at Brighton last autumn, when little Sir John Lade bet the bulky Lord Cholmondeley that he would carry him on his back from opposite the Pavilion twice round the Steyne. To witness the settling of the bet, His Highness of Wales attended, accompanied by his friends and a bevy of beauties. Lade then declared that in the wager no mention had been made of his Lordship's clothes, and, since Cholmondeley could not bring himself to shock the ladies by revealing himself in a state of nature, Prinny ruled that he had lost the wager.'

When the laughter had subsided Sheridan went on: 'In this present business, had I thought it possible that Malderini could really levitate his wife I'd never have risked my money. I assumed from the first that he was a clever conjuror that it lay with us to pit our wits against his and, by exposing him as such, make him pay up.'

Roger then made his only contribution to the discussion. 'What you say of winning a wager by the use of one's wits is acceptable. But it is my belief that Malderini staged his demonstration this afternoon with deliberate intent to lure several of us into betting big sums with him.'

'That,' Droopy nodded, 'was my own thought, when a moment back I said I believed him to 'be a rogue.'

Sheridan stiffened slightly. 'I do not know him well enough to guarantee the contrary; and I would have you remember, gentlemen, that I brought him here at Lady St. Ermins's request; so you must not hold me responsible for his conduct.'

Georgina caught Esther's eye and rose. The gentlemen bowed the ladies from the room, then reseated themselves at the Colonel's end of the table, and commenced to pass the port. Soon they were deep in a discussion of the conditions of the wager, and the possibility that Malderini might win it by use of mass hypnotism.

It was Droopy who produced that idea. In his studies of the East he had read an account of an Indian conjuror throwing a rope up into the air, where it remained rigid while his small boy climbed it, and the explanation given had been that neither the rope nor the boy had left the ground; the audience, having been mesmerised by the conjuror, only imagined that they had done so.

The Colonel declared that he could no more credit the possibility of one person mesmerising half-​a-​dozen or more others simultaneously, to a degree that they were all victims of the same illusion, than he could the lifting of a human body into the air by will power.

It was at that point that Roger, having made quick work of a second glass of port, asked to be excused, so that he might fulfil his first duty as an umpire, and make certain, that the yellow drawing-​room had been prepared in accordance with Ms instructions.

The room, which could be entered both from the hall and from the larger drawing-​room, was some twenty-​five feet wide by forty long, including the bay of a window that occupied the greater part of its far end. It could not have been better suited to the purpose, as the still good light of the long summer evening on the far side of the drawn curtains made a broad semicircular band on the parquet below them, and from it just enough light was reflected to enable people to recognise one another when in the room.

Having assured himself that no wires or any other secret apparatus had been installed in the room while they were at dinner, Roger chalked out a line nine feet long across the bay and twelve feet in from it. He then had the servants carry in ten chairs and directed their placing. One was put a yard away from each extremity of the line, and the other eight facing and some six feet away from it in a row across the room.

When he had dismissed the servants he went back into the big drawing-​room and found the whole company now assembled there. Taking up a five-​branched Dresden candelabra from a side table, he invited Malderini to inspect his preparations. The Venetian accompanied him into the yellow silk-​panelled room and, after a careful look round, expressed himself as satisfied. Roger left him to inform the others, replaced the candelabra, and ushered them in.

Once the door was closed it seemed that they were in complete darkness, but after a few moments their eyes became accustomed to the gloom and they could see the outline of the row of chair backs against the band of pale light below the hem of the curtains round the big bay window, Roger offered his arm to the Princess and led her to the chair facing the right-​hand extremity of the chalked line, then asked Malderini to take that at its other end, opposite to her. The rest of the party settled themselves in the row of chairs, the ladies in the centre, Sheridan on their right, and the Colonel, Droopy Ned and Beckford in that order on the left, Roger took the remaining chair on the extreme right, so that he was nearest to the Princess, called for silence, and told Malderini that they were ready for him to begin,