Dennis Wheatley - The Satanist

Still she battled to maintain her balance, pitting her will against his. But his was the stronger. Her head bowed under the pressure so that she was staring down into the abyss. Then, like an officer giving the order to a firing squad to shoot, she heard him call down to her the one word, 'Jump.'

She flexed her knees, swayed sideways, threw up her arms, and with a wild cry fell outward into space.

***

Immediately after receiving the radio message about Lothar's broadcast Verney asked the Lieutenant leading his party to circulate to all the other climbing teams an urgent signal. So far the troops had been told only that they were on an emergency operation and must get up to the cave for the purpose of arresting with the least possible delay anyone they found in it. Now they were told that in the cave there was a madman who had stolen an H bomb, and that he planned to let it off at midday. They were then called on to take risks if necessary and make an all-out effort to reach the cave in time. Verney also took it on himself to promise quadruple pensions for the dependants of men who might be injured or killed in the attempt, and rich rewards and honours for the first three teams to reach the cave. They were told, too, that although other teams were on the way to the far entrance of the cave, these had had to make a wide detour before starting their climb, so there was no chance of their reaching the goal first. In consequence, success or failure depended on the teams that had set out on the direct route up from the wrecked engine-house.

There was no more that he could do; yet within the next few minutes it was apparent that the message had galvanized the troops into considerably swifter progress, and his own party resumed the climb at a faster pace.

As the officer or N.C.O. leading each party carried a walkie-talkie set the Sergeant with Barney's team had received the radio message relayed from Berne at the same time as his Lieutenant. The moment Barney heard of it he too realized that only a superhuman effort could enable them to reach the cave before midday, and without waiting for C.B.'s message he urged his party to greater speed.

For the amateurs the pace on the easier stretches became grinding; yet the harder ones caused them more distress from their very slowness on them, and the time it took to cut steps in the ice or plough through patches of soft snow. Many times they slipped and would, perhaps, have fallen to their deaths had it not been for the strong surefooted Alpine troops to whom they were roped before and behind.

At times Barney almost despaired of reaching the cave at all. Every hundred feet or so his party found itself confronted with a great mass of overhanging rock, round which a way had to be worked, or a narrow, almost vertical chimney that had to be climbed as the only means of continuing the ascent. In one case they had to cross a glacier and, in another, edge their way along thirty feet of ledge that was in no place more than eighteen inches wide. Not daring to look down, he kept his eyes fixed on the man in front of him, endeavouring to follow his footsteps exactly, but a dozen times his heart was in his mouth and he feared that at any moment he would fall headlong over the precipice.

As they made their way upwards he lost all sense of time until, on coming out from beneath an overhang, he caught sight of the opening of the cave about three hundred feet above him. A quick glance at his watch showed that it was half past eleven. They had, he knew, performed marvels in the past hour, but to scale that last three hundred feet of snow and ice in less than the remaining thirty minutes seemed beyond even the greatest human endeavour.

For a further quarter of an hour, sweating and straining, they toiled on. Then he heard a shout. It came from a member of another party some way to the left of his. The shout was quickly answered by another from higher up. Looking upward, he saw that a woman had emerged from the cave. A moment later he recognized her as Mary. His relief at knowing her still to be alive was so great that, although he waved, for a moment he could not utter a sound. Tears started to his eyes and he was choking with emotion.

Within a few minutes all the men in the climbing teams who were in sight of the cave were staring up at her in wonder, as they saw her run to the cable-railway platform then risk a fall to death by wriggling out over its edge and supporting herself only by a precarious hold on one of its girders.

As she slid to the ledge and picked herself up, Barney let his breath go in a gasp of relief. Finding his voice he urged his team to still greater efforts, but they had covered no more than a dozen paces when Lothar appeared on the upper platform. Verney and Barney both recognized him and almost simultaneously shouted:

'There he is! Shoot him! Shoot! Shoot!'

Some of the troops were armed with Sten guns and others with pistols. Only a few carried rifles, but those who did swiftly unslung them and opened fire. None of their bullets appeared to score a hit and in the next two minutes all the climbers who could see the cave watched with horror as Mary's tragedy was played out.

Verney, Otto and Barney alone among them fully understood what was taking place. But the others realized instinctively that the tall, dark man on the upper ledge was ordering the woman on the lower to throw herself over the precipice.

Barney drew the pistol he had been lent and aimed it at Lothar, then lowered his arm. At that range even rifles were proving ineffective, and a pistol bullet might as easily have hit Mary as the man who was driving her to her death. He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again Mary had thrown herself sideways and was hurtling into the abyss.

***

The parties had started upward again. The rifles had ceased to crack. Lothar had disappeared unharmed into the cave. Barney was climbing now as an automaton. Grief and pain filled his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Instinctively he continued to place his feet in the footsteps of the man ahead and to advance or halt as he was told.

That he should have been robbed of Mary at the eleventh hour caused him a sick misery the like of which he had never before known in all his life. During the past unbearably anxious days he had come to realize that she meant everything to him; that no other woman could ever compensate him for her loss. Almost he had resigned himself to it, believing it next to impossible that the Great Ram would allow her to live after she had thrown the crucifix in his face. Yet he had. Only a few minutes ago she had still been alive, and unharmed. Now she was dead, a broken twisted body grotesquely doubled across some spur of rock, or buried deep in snow, far down below.

The Sergeant rounded a shoulder of the mountain that brought the cable railway again into full view. Suddenly he gave a shout:

There she is! Blessed God, a miracle!'

The others clambered round the corner after him. He had come out on a humpy ledge of rock broad enough for all his team to stand on. Opposite to them and about ten feet away sagged one of the long swags of triple cable along which the cage of the railway ran. Twenty feet lower down there stood one of the tall T-shaped steel pylons that supported the cables. At the base of the pylon, where snow had piled up, Mary was lying on her stomach, clinging with one arm to the nearest steel strut.

Her sideways lurch as she fell had temporarily saved her. Instead of plunging to the depths she had shot forward beneath the railway terminus platform, hit one of its outer stanchions, checked, slid, bounced, rolled and finally brought up on the drift of snow that had accumulated against the first great pylon some eighty feet below the level of the cave.

'Mary! Mary!' Barney's voice cracked as he shouted down to her. 'Hang on! Can you hang on? Are you all right?'