Dennis Wheatley - The Satanist

She tiptoed along, and peeped in. It was deserted but still faintly lit by the small blue pilot bulb. From the cabin beyond it came the snoring of the Chinese cook. As she looked quickly round her glance fell on a saw-edged bread knife that had been left on the table. She would have preferred something more lethal; but it would have taken time to hunt through the drawers, and she dared not linger there. Snatching up the bread knife, she ran back to her own cabin, slipped inside, and shut the door. Still trembling, she threw down her shoes, stepped out of her skirt and, getting into the bunk, pulled the blankets over her.

For some minutes she lay there, her mind a prey to despair and fear - despair of getting the better of the Great Ram and sabotaging the rocket, and fear that his psychic sense would tell him that had been Wash's intention. Then she heard the muffled sound of footsteps and voices outside in the tunnel. She could not catch what was said but they were not raised in anger; so it seemed that Wash had got away with his bluff. Relief surged through her at the thought that he was not dead; that she had not been left alone with the Great Ram and was about to become his next victim.

Wash entered the cabin next to hers. She heard its door slam and a little shuffling, then silence fell. Now she was seized with the urge to talk to him, to find out what had passed between him and the Great Ram, and do her utmost to persuade him to make a further attempt later in the night to sabotage the rocket. But she knew she must control her impatience. To leave her cabin while the Great Ram was still about might prove fatal.

It was as well that she waited. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed. There came a faint sound and she knew that someone had opened the door of her cabin. A sixth sense told her that it was the Great Ram and warned her to keep perfectly still. She felt certain that he had looked in to make sure that she was there and asleep. Now, she thanked her stars that she had obeyed Wash and returned to her cabin instead of remaining among the fuel drums. If her cabin had been empty and she had been found near the rocket, she knew that she would never have been able to stand up to the Great Ram's questioning.

He took a step forward into the cabin. Her heart contracted with a spasm of fear. She was the useless member of the party and he had good cause to hate her. Perhaps he had not just come to see if she was asleep, but had decided that the time had come to rid himself of her. She was still holding the bread knife. Instinctively her grasp tightened on its handle. Had he touched her she would have flung back the blanket and lunged blindly at him. But after a moment he stepped back, murmured a few sentences of what sounded like gibberish, and closed the door.

Sweating from every pore she continued to lie there, still not quite certain that he had left her. It seemed an age before she could summon up the courage to turn her head a little sideways and steal a swift glance from beneath still lowered eyelids. She let her breath go in a great sigh. Except for herself, the faint blue light showed the cabin to be empty.

Once more she resigned herself to wait with patience, until it could be reasonably assumed that the coast was clear. Every few minutes she looked at her wrist watch. Its hands seemed to move with incredible slowness, but minute by minute an hour crept by. Getting out of the bunk, she put on her skirt and cautiously opened the door. No sound came to her and momentarily her hopes soared again. By playing on Wash's resentment at having been tricked by the Great Ram and doing her utmost to strengthen the feeling she had instilled into him that, as a Satanist, he had backed the wrong horse, she might yet induce him to make another attempt to sabotage the rocket and, this time, perhaps they would succeed.

Next moment her hopes fell to zero. The door stood open but she could not pass through the doorway. The Great Ram had erected an invisible barrier there that held her a prisoner more surely than any locks and bolts. Strive as she would, just as had been the case at the Cedars, she could not put a foot over the threshold.

***

Only the hands of Mary's watch told her that she had got through the night. Lying fully dressed on her bunk, through parts of it she had dozed; but she had the impression that she had not dropped off, even for a few moments, and certainly her brain had never ceased to revolve round and round the coming day and the terrible fate that it might usher in for millions of helpless people.

On finding that she could not leave her cabin, she had thought of trying to knock Wash up so that he would leave his and come round to her. But the partition that separated the two cabins was made of thick timber. With the handle of the breadknife she had rapped a tattoo on it, but without result. An hour had elapsed since the Great Ram had left them, and from experience she knew how soundly Wash slept. It was evident that he had already fallen into one of his heavy slumbers, and that to rouse him would need violent hammering. The noise that would make would, she felt sure, bring the Great Ram on the scene, and that she dared not risk.

The fact that he had erected an occult barrier to prevent her from leaving her cabin she took to be a clear indication that Wash had not altogether got away with his bluff about his concern regarding the alignment of the rocket. In some way the Great Ram's suspicions had been aroused and, she guessed, they took the form of suspecting the truth - that she was endeavouring to turn Wash against him, and influencing him to interfere in some way with the rocket's proper functioning.

Wretchedly she had flung herself on her bunk, and endeavoured alternately to devise a means of wrecking the Great Ram's plans when morning came, or giving in to her tired mind and, sloughing off all responsibility, get to sleep. She had succeeded in neither.

Soon after seven o'clock she heard the clatter of pans in the galley, but the Chinese cook did not come to call her as on the previous day. She got up, tidied herself as well as she could and again tried to leave her cabin, but found that the invisible barrier still held her back. Half an hour later she caught sounds of Wash stirring in the cabin next door. Shortly afterwards it was swiftly conveyed to her that he was trapped too. She could hear him shouting:

'What goes on here! Master! Exalted One! I'd bust right through this had any lesser Mage corralled me in. But why put me behind the bars? Come on now! Let me outa here. Let me out, I say!'

To his shouts there came no reply. In vain Mary tried to attract his attention by calling to him, but his angry bellows drowned her cries. Nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed before he seemed to resign himself to having been made a prisoner, and fell silent. She seized the opportunity to beat a loud tattoo on the board wall that divided their cabins. After a few minutes he responded with heavy thumps. The planks in the partition were thick, but there were thin chinks between them. By enunciating clearly in a low voice that was not much above a whisper, each could hear what the other said.

Both, by similar occult spells, had been made prisoners in their cabins. Wash said of the previous night that the Great Ram had not appeared to suspect him of a double cross. When he had suggested that the rocket was completely out of alignment if the intention was for it to fall on Saanen, the Great Ram had replied that he had changed his mind and decided to send it in the opposite direction, so that it should fall in the more sparsely populated Bernese Oberland in the neighbourhood of the little town of Ilanz.

That was all very well but, while Saanen lay to the west, Ilanz lay to the north-east, not many degrees off a direct course to Moscow; and, having seen the route and calculations in the Great Ram's office for the rocket's flight, Wash had not been taken in by this plausible excuse for its reorientation.