Dennis Wheatley - To The Devil A Daughter

`I saw it.'

`No you didn't,' C. B. said bitterly. `But I don't doubt you thought you did. It just shows what a powerful Black he is to have been able to cast the thought into your mind so successfully.'

While they were speaking they had scrambled out of the car and started to run down the track. It curved again round another island of reeds, then came to an abrupt ending at a rough wooden landing stage.

With a curse John made to plunge into the water. Grabbing his coat collar, C. B. pulled him back and cried, `Don't be a fool! The mud in these marshes is yards deep in places, and there are under water reeds as well. You would drown for a certainty.'

To have run all the way back to the road, then down the other track which followed the far side of the creek on which they were standing, would have taken at least twenty minutes. Impotent and furious, they could only remain where they were, watching the final scene of their enemy's triumph.

The coloured servant had already turned the Canon's car and was driving it back towards the road. The Canon was now in the punt and being poled out to the seaplane. They could see now that, although small and tubby, it was a powerful twin-​engined affair. Upson came to its door and helped his passenger aboard.

As the labourer in the punt pushed off C. B. cupped his hands and yelled to him to come and pick them up, offering him treble the money he had received for ferrying out his last passenger if he would do so. He made the bid only as a forlorn hope and, as he expected, it proved futile. Either from fear of the Canon, or because he knew that he had been assisting an illegal emigration, the fellow ignored C.B.'s shouts, poled the punt back into the boathouse, then disappeared among the reeds. By that time Upson had the seaplane's engines running. Two minutes later it turned into the wind and ran forward. A double sheet of spray hissed up from beneath its stern and a quarter of a mile down the creek it sailed gracefully into the air.

Returning to the car, they spent twenty minutes trying to get it unditched; but there was no brushwood, or anything else of that kind in the vicinity that they could stuff under the wheels to give them a grip; so they were forced to abandon their efforts.

C. B. glanced at his watch and said, `This is not so good, John. It is a quarter-​past four and we are miles from anywhere. If we had the use of the car we could have reached London before dark and, perhaps, managed to hire a plane to fly us out to Nice; but that is ruled out now. It must be a good hour's tramp to the nearest village and in these little places they don't run to hire cars. By the time we've telephoned to Colchester and got a car to pick us up, then done the seventy miles to Northolt, it will be getting on for eight o'clock; and the aircraft of the private companies are not equipped for night flying.'

John looked a little puzzled as he replied, `But we decided to stay here.'

`That was when we thought the Canon meant to stay here too, and we could keep a watch on him.'

`I know; and the fact that he will now be down on the Riviera by about nine o'clock naturally adds to the chances of his being able to get Christina out of prison. After your visit last night he is certain to have telephoned de Grasse to make all the preliminary arrangements for his attempt; and now he'll have the whole of the night to work in. But all the same, it seems to me that we still have a good hope of spiking his guns at the last moment.'

`You mean if the prison authorities do their stuff? I agree about that. From the moment the idea of putting her inside was mooted I felt that we were on a winner. And in spite of what the old so and so said to me last night I'd still lay three to one against his or any other Black Magician succeeding in getting her out at such short notice.'

`No, I didn't mean that, C. B. I meant in the worst went saying that he does succeed. He has still got to bring her and the homunculus back here to morrow. Seaplanes can't just land anywhere. At least, this one can't if it is to fulfill its purpose of putting the Canon, Christina either unwillingly or unconscious and that heavy crate safely ashore. And I should think the odds are very much against his having another prepared base in this neighborhood, because he could hardly have foreseen that we should discover this one. Now that we have, you can go to the police, report his unauthorized departure from the country, and have it watched for their return. We'll relieve him of Christina as he lands, and have him and Upson arrested.'

C. B. looked at John and his face was troubled. `It's a good idea, laddie; but I'm afraid it won't work out. Now he knows we know his base he is much too crafty to return to it. And there is more to it than that. You remember what we were saying a while ago; about our being certain of winning out on the big issue only if we could prevent one of the three factors Canon, homunculus and Christina from joining up with the other two? Well, that is now beyond our power. In a few hours' time all three of them will be in Nice. You know the story of Mahomet when he couldn't get the mountain to come to him? In this case Christina is the mountain; and so far the Canon has failed to budge her. Since we have made things so hot for him here, and the time in which to get her back is now so short, it is my bet that he decided this morning to do the job out there. That is why he had the homunculus put on the seaplane instead of hiding it in the house of a pal. And now Mahomet has gone to the mountain.'

21

The Pact with Satan

`Oh God!' muttered John. `So far that fiend has won every trick, and soon there will be only a few locked doors between him and Christina. Is there nothing we can do to help in preventing him from getting at her?'

`We can send a telegram warning Malouet that the Canon is on his way,' C. B. suggested. `There is just a chance that the French police might pick him up on landing. If so, he could be arrested for illegal entry. But you can be sure that he has been in communication with de Grasse about flying out; so the seaplane will not come down at the Ile de Port Cros. De Grasse would not risk that. He will appreciate that since our visit to it yesterday morning Malouet may have got the police to keep it under observation; so he will have instructed Upson to land at one of his other haunts, where there is little chance of his being spotted. I'm afraid, John, that for to night you'll have to pin your faith on the French prison system; and believe me, it's a pretty good one.'

`I only hope you're right. Anyhow, the sooner we send that telegram, the better.' Leaning through the window of the car, John pulled a map from the pocket next to the driver's seat. A glance at it showed that the nearest village was probably Great Oakley. They could not be certain of their exact position among the tangled creeks of Hansford Water, but judged the village to be between three and five miles distant. Having locked the car they set off there.

The sky was a uniform grey, but somewhere in the west the sun was now getting down towards the horizon, and as they began to trudge in that direction John wondered miserably how fate would deal with Christina during this last critical night before her birthday. He would have given a great deal to be with her or, that being out of the question, at least able to keep watch outside her prison; and his impotence riled him all the more from the fact that it was he who had taken the decision to remain in England to watch the Canon. C. B. had given him the choice early that afternoon, and had he chosen the alternative they could have been well on their way to Nice by now. Yet he knew that it was silly to blame himself for his blunder, as it had seemed the best course to take at the time.

It was half past five when they reached Great Oakley and the light was fading. From the village pub they telephoned their telegram to Malouet, then put through a call to a garage in Colchester for a breakdown van with a searchlight. It picked them up at a quarter past six and they returned to the marshes. They lost twenty minutes searching along several tracks for the point at which C.B.’s car had become ditched, but once they found it there was little difficulty in hauling the car out. Both of them now thought it unlikely that the seaplane would bring the Canon back and land again on the same stretch of water next day, but that possibility could not be ignored; so they intended asking the police to keep a watch on it. To do so meant going in to Colchester and, with the Canon gone, there no longer seemed any point in their sleeping at Little Bentford. In consequence, in the car with John at the wheel once more, they collected their bags from the Weavers Arms and drove to the market town. There John dropped C. B. off at the police station and went on to book rooms and order dinner at the Red Lion.