Dennis Wheatley - The Satanist

After gazing fixedly down into her crystal for about half a minute, the woman sat back, gave her an uneasy look, and said: 'You're heading for trouble. I'd watch my step, if I were you.'

'What sort of trouble?' enquired Mary.

'You know,' replied the woman darkly. 'Wouldn't do to speak of it here. And if you take a drive into the country with a fair man, you'll have cause to regret it. Next please!'

For a moment Mary had been both startled and frightened; for she had jumped to the conclusion that the clairvoyant's warning must refer to her association with the Brotherhood. But the mention of 'a fair man' set her at ease again, convincing her that the woman was only baiting her hook with the most likely lure to induce a potential customer to spend two guineas on a private consultation.

Twenty minutes later the session was over and they all trooped across the hall for the usual refreshments. Ratnadatta paused by Mary to smile a greeting and say to her in a low voice, 'I haf no news for you yet. Next week perhaps. Do not fail to attend here every week; otherwise when time comes I haf the bother to make contact with you where you live.'

He then quickly left her to get hold of the woman wearing valuable jewels, to whom he had spent most of his time talking during the after-session reception the previous week.

As Mary had, two days before, contemplated leaving London, his last words aroused a vague fear in her. They might have simply referred to her flat, the address of which he already had: but they might equally well have implied that wherever she went he had the means of finding her. In any case, they clearly indicated that she was no longer free to sever at will her connection with the Brotherhood, and that if she tried to she must expect him to seek her out and, perhaps, inflict some form of punishment on her.

Thrusting that unnerving thought out of her mind, she looked quickly round for Barney. He was near the end of the buffer furthest from her, and engaged in conversation with a small earnest woman who, from an experience of her own, she knew, once started, babbled on like a brook. That he would have liked to break away was evident from the fact that he kept throwing sideways glances at other people, particularly at Ratnadatta, who was only a few feet distant from him.

Mary had accepted a sausage roll from a man who was a regular attendant at Mrs. Wardeel's meetings, and after exchanging a few words with her he moved off with the dish; so she decided that as soon as she had finished it she would both rescue Barney from the bore and gently reproach him for having ignored her. But, before she could put her plate down, she was buttonholed by her admirer, the retired general, who thrust a cup of coffee upon her; and he was such a pleasant old man that she had not the heart to cut him short then push her way across the room to break in on another conversation.

The minutes ticked by without change in the situation until people began to leave. Ratnadatta went out with the richly bejewelled woman and did not return. Barney, who had been listening with only half an ear to reminiscences about a poltergeist, cursed silently, his only reason for having come there having been to get on friendly terms with the Indian.

Quickly, he re-assessed the situation. Through being deprived of the chance of tactfully opening the subject of other occult circles existing which were, perhaps, much more advanced than Mrs. Wardeel's, as a first move in getting Ratnadatta to take him to his, he felt that he had wasted his evening. But not quite, perhaps, as Mary was still there.

He had decided that, lovely as she was to look at, her ill-temper and unpredictability rendered her not worth powder and shot as a woman; but, nevertheless, she had actually been to Ratnadatta's circle, so there was always the chance that she might be in a more amenable mood this evening, and willing to talk about it. Suddenly the boyish smile broke over his round face, he put out his hand to the little babbling brook, seized hers, wrung it heartily and said, 'It's been terribly interesting to hear about your poltergeist; but I must go now. Train to catch. Goodnight.'

Before she quite realized that she had lost her audience, he was across the room and focusing his friendly grin on the retired general. 'Sorry to butt in, Sir; but I promised to see Mrs. Mauriac home, and most people seem to be leaving.'

Mary made no demur until they were in the street, then she said: 'Really! Of all the impudence! First to practically cut me, then stake a claim to me as if I were your . . . your, er . . .' 'Dark lady of the Sonnets,' suggested Barney helpfully. "No, you fool. I mean, as though there were some sort of understanding between us.'

'Well, there is, isn't there?' he countered, with cheerful assurance. 'I like you and you like me. At least I hope you do. I must admit, though, that I'm a bit jealous of this fair-haired chap who is going to take you for a run in the country.'

'Oh, that was all nonsense.' Mary spoke with confidence, yet she had an uneasy memory of the clairvoyant's face as she had warned her that she was heading for trouble. Could she, after all, have seen in her crystal darkly an aura of evil round her questioner, and - sudden thought - could the 'fair-haired chap' possibly be the very tall Satanist who, on the previous Saturday evening, had lifted her off her feet and kissed her until she was gasping for breath?

'Of course,' Barney agreed. 'The old bag was just throwing out whatever struck her as the most likely draw to induce suckers to spend a couple of quid on a private consultation. As I'm dark, in my case it was a ravishing blonde, and the suggestion that she was going to lead me a dance the subtle twist to intrigue me into wanting to hear just what sort of a dance she might lead me. But as I don't happen to be interested in a blonde, and even if I met one, am too busy just now to run after her, Madame Zero, or whatever she calls herself, was barking up the wrong tree.'

Mary did not reply, but she was thinking, 'You don't realize it, my gay boyo, but you are escorting a blonde home here and now, and with a little luck, it's a pretty dance she is going to lead you!' After a moment, she asked: 'What did you think of the lecture?�

'The first part made sense. Everything these people say about reincarnation is so logical that there seems no answer to their arguments in support of it.'

'Yes, there's something awfully reasonable about regarding the world as a school at which we get a move up, or not, at the opening of each new term as a result of the good or bad marks we have earned the term before. It is much more attractive than the idea of a Day of Judgment on which everyone is tried on their performance in a single life and either carried up to heaven or thrown down to hell, for all eternity.'

'I don't mind paying up for my lapses,' Barney remarked, 'but, like old Omar Khayyam, I feel that when the last Trump sounds we'd be justified in saying to God, "You made me as I am, so what about it?" '

Mary laughed. 'I don't think I'd have the courage to do that; and I really am on the way to becoming a reincarnationist. To have made one's own bed and have to lie on it until one can make a better is the sort of treatment no one could reasonably complain about.'

'True enough; but these Theosophists aren't content to accept the basic teaching, and they've gone right off the rails somewhere. How could that American woman, or anyone else, really know about these big shots who are supposed to ordain all that happens in the world. If one took literally what she said about the two great Masters living on either side of a valley in Tibet, it would conjure up a picture of two elderly crap players throwing the dice, one of whom is an American and the other a Russian. As for the Master the Count, if he ever had any existence outside the wildest imagination, I'll bet that by this time his castle in Hungary has been taken over as a free holiday resort for good little Marxists, and that the Reds put the skids under the old gentleman long ago.'