Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

Driven near mad by the hellish picture Malderini had conjured up, Roger exerted every ounce of his strength in an attempt to break away from his guards and get at him again. It was useless. They had him firmly by the arms and kicked his feet from under him. As he lay between them, half sprawled upon the floor, the Venetian glowered over him and wheezed:

'You hoped to provoke me into making a quick finish of you. did you not? But I have learned to control anger and to prevent myself from giving way to impulses which I should later regret. Tonight you may sleep in peace if you can. It is said, though, that anticipation is the greater part of pleasure. That it may harrow the mind with the thought of pain to come is equally true. I think that you will get little sleep while through the dark hours you contemplate the promises I have made you.' From French he broke into fluent Urdu and, after making a jerky bow to the young Rajah, ordered the guards to take Roger away.

Still struggling, he was dragged from the lofty hall, along several corridors and down a dark stairway. At its bottom there was a narrow chamber dimly lit by a smoky oil lamp. Along one side of it were a row of stout wooden doors, and a burly man was sitting there on a stool eating a mess out of a brass bowl. As the man stood up, a bunch of keys jangled at his girdle. Selecting one he unlocked one of the doors, and Roger was pitched through it, down a short flight of steps into a light less dungeon.

How long he lay where he had fallen, his body a mass or pains and aches from the kicks and cuffs he had received, and his brain half numbed by shock and hopeless misery, he never knew. Scratchings, squeaks and scamperings came to his ears without meaning; it was not until a rat actually ran across his face that he jerked himself up and made a conscious endeavour to think coherently. Wriggling along the floor he reached a wall, turned over, sat up with his back to it, and tried to sort out the nightmare through which he had lived since being brought before the Rajah of Bahna.

Bemused as his mind still was. one clear thought dominated it. He had done Clarissa a terrible injustice. On the flimsy grounds that she had encouraged Gunston's attentions during the latter half of January, he had allowed himself to believe that she had eloped with him. For four days he had been obsessed with that thought, yet now it seemed positively farcical. Worse, it was an insult to her honest and fearless character. The depth and tenacity of the love with which she had pursued him for so long should have been guarantee enough that she would never abandon him lightly, and that even if they had tired of one another to the extent of quarrelling most bitterly, she would have had the courage to tell him her intention before finally committing herself with another lover. Tears of shame welled up into his eyes and he mentally squirmed at the memory of having thought so meanly of her.

About what had actually taken place, he now had no doubts at all. As he had warned Clarissa at Stillwaters, no hypnotist could obtain power over a person unless that person willingly submitted to being hypnotised. But once they had surrendered their will to the hypnotist, he could without their consent hypnotise them again. The tragedy was that his warning had been given too late. In her eagerness to catch a glimpse of the future, Clarissa had asked Malderini to hypnotise her that afternoon, and all she could promise afterwards was to keep away from him so that he should have no opportunity of throwing her into a trance again.

Evidently, on learning from Gunston that they were in Calcutta, Malderini had set off there and, probably, stayed for some days at a place outside the city while he sent spies into it. All native servants were born gossips, and delighted in talking boastfully about their masters' and mistresses' affairs; so it would have been easy for a spy to learn from one of Roger's household that he intended to spend the week end up at Chinsurah.

After that all Malderini would have had to do was to come face to face with Clarissa so that he could stare at her for a few moments with those compelling eyes of his. To enforce silence on her temporarily and the suggestion that she must hear what he had to say in private would have been his first move. No doubt to break her will to a degree at which she would consent to have all her things packed and go away, apparently quite willingly, with him had required far greater effort and prolonged concentration, as it was certain that in her subconscious mind she would have fought desperately against such a command; but that explained why they had remained for over an hour together out on the veranda before she had begun to make her preparations for departure.

Roger could only hope now that Malderini had kept her in a state of trance right up to the present; for, if so, it seemed possible that she was still unaware that she had really been abducted, and thought herself only the victim of a horrid dream, so was at least not a prey to an agony of apprehension about her future.

He had got only so far in his unhappy speculations when the big key grated in the lock, the door swung open and the powerful looking jailer came down the three steps into the dungeon. The light percolating in from outside was just sufficient for Roger to see that he was carrying a calabash in one hand and a bowl in the other. Setting these down on the floor the man produced from his tunic a hammer, then fumbled about until he found the loose end of a chain that had its other end fixed in the wall. With the deft movements of long practice he put an iron shackle round Roger's left ankle and hammered home some rivets which secured it to the chain. Next he drew a knife, and cut the cords that bound Roger's arms, then, turning away, he left the dungeon, locking the door behind him.

As Roger's arms had been bound for several hours, he at first found it very painful to move them, but after a few minutes he was able to stretch out for the food and water left for him by the jailer. The bowl contained a cold curry which was so fierce that normally he would have refused it, but he had not eaten since midday and felt that he ought to keep up his strength; so he gulped down the mess bit by bit, then drank more than half the water in the calabash in an attempt to allay the burning of his throat.

The meal did him good and after it he began to wonder if there was any conceivable means by which he might escape. Now that his arms were free, next time the jailer came in to bring him a meal he might seize and attempt to overpower him. But the man was bigger than he was, so the chance of succeeding was poor. Perhaps, though, he could even up the odds by first snatching the jailer's knife. One swift ruthless stab, and to silence him after that would be easy. But did he carry his hammer on him? Roger had already examined the chain that held him by the leg and found it impossible to shift with his fingers the bolts fastening the ankle clamp. Without the hammer he would be unable to free himself unless. Yes, he should be able to work the staple, that secured the chain to the wall, out from between the stones with the point of the jailer's knife. But that might take hours. And what then?

He had been hustled through a maze of courts and corridors, vague memories of which now confused him rather than helped him to form any idea of the geography of the palace. When he reached the top of the stairs, he would not even know which way to turn with the best chance of getting out. He could disguise himself in the jailer's clothes; but he could not conceal his blue eyes and fair-​skinned face. They would betray him at one glance from any of the Rajah's people; and it was a certainty that he could not for long seek a way to freedom without coming upon some of them. Then, should he have the luck to reach a gate, during the night it would be locked and, since he was a foreigner, he could not hope to bluff the guards into letting him through. Even if by some miracle he escaped all these hazards and found a wall over which he could climb into the street, he would be little better off. As a single European in a native city his recapture within a few hours was certain.