Better still - the idea sprang to her mind - have him arrested. As soon as she saw a policeman she would hammer on the taxi window for the driver to stop and shout to the policeman for help. When he came running up she would identify the shoes on Ratnadatta's feet as her husband's, denounce him as a murderer, and have him taken into custody.
The taxi had headed south down Collingham Road and was now running through the Boltons. It was a quiet residential district, but she hoped that she would sight a policeman either as they crossed, or turned into, the busy Fulham Road.
Before they reached it, another thought struck her. What if the policeman refused to believe her? Ratnadatta was no fool. It was certain he would say that she was suffering from delusions and he was taking her to a nursing home, or some such story. Could the policeman refuse to take them to the Station? That seemed unlikely. Yet he might. And, if he did, on that one cast she would have lost everything. She could refuse to re-enter the taxi with Ratnadatta but, before she could get hold of Colonel Verney, the Indian would have got rid of the tell-tale shoes and be calling on the Great Ram to exert his terrible powers against her.
Reluctantly she decided that she dared not risk such a gamble. She must free herself from Ratnadatta in some other way, so that he would have no suspicion that she was anything other than he believed her to be. Then she would go straight to Colonel Verney.
A sudden illness was the thing. A pretended heart attack? No, that would be overdoing it. She had assured Ratnadatta, when he had questioned her about her health on the evening when he had given her dinner, that physically she was as sound as a bell. At the time she had wondered why he had asked, but later realized that he had done so as a precaution against having a young woman on his hands who might collapse from fright at the sight of the black imp. But a faint. She could preface it by saying she felt ill owing to a combination of overwork and banting. The reluctance she had shown to come with him would substantiate that. If she pretended to pass out for long enough, that should do the trick. It could be taken as certain that he had not told the taxi man to drive up to the mansion, and he could not carry her the last quarter of a mile; so he would have no option but to take her home.
By this time they had traversed Park Walk, and were crossing the Kings Road towards the river. As they reached the Chelsea Embankment and turned south-west along it, another thought struck her. She was being taken to the Temple with her eyes unbandaged. If she played her bluff and it succeeded she would lose the chance of finding out where the mansion lay. And she had no idea where Ratnadatta lived. The police should be able to pick him up at Mrs. Wardeel's on the coming Tuesday evening; but, even under intensive questioning, he might refuse to disclose the whereabouts of the Temple and to give any information about his fellow Satanists, some of whom must have been his accomplices in Teddy's murder.
Henry of Navarre, she remembered, had cynically remarked that 'Paris was worth a Mass'. Compressing her lips she decided that to ensure the round-up of the Brotherhood would be compensation enough for almost any degrading act she might be called on to perform as an earnest of her willingness to serve Satan. Ratnadatta had repeatedly assured her that her initiation would not come until later, and he had even said a few minutes back that he expected her business to be through soon after nine. He had not lied to her about last time, so she had no reason to suppose that he was doing so now.
All being well, if Colonel Verney was at home she could be with him by ten o'clock. It should not take him long to get Scotland Yard moving. By eleven, or half-past at the latest, a police cordon could be thrown round the Temple; they would raid the place, catch the Brotherhood of the Ram near-naked in the midst of their Saturday celebrations and, by midnight, have the whole evil crew in the bag.
Mary had barely made up her mind to take anything that might be coming to her during the next hour and a half in order to achieve this master stroke, when the taxi turned away from the river, ran for a few hundred yards up a side-street, and slowed to a stop. Since the night on which she had been received as a neophyte she had realized that the Temple could not be so far away from Sloane Square as North London but, all the same, she was surprised to find that it was actually within ten minutes' drive of Cromwell Road. Having taken her resolve, she made no demur about getting out and, after Ratnadatta had paid off the taxi, walking with him through the mean streets to the entrance to the alley which was now familiar to her.
In the courtyard at its end no cars were yet parked and, now that she saw the front of the mansion for the first time in daylight, she realized more fully how abandoned it appeared. Obviously none of its windows had been opened for many years. Some of the panes of glass were cracked and others missing. In the corners, generations of spiders had spun their webs and, in two places where panes were missing, sparrows had built nests. Behind all the grimy windows were stout wooden shutters that had once been painted white, but were now grey with dirt and mottled where the paint was peeling from them.
As Mary went up the cracked stone steps with Ratnadatta, she was intrigued to see at one side of the front door a small board on which faded capitals announced 'kemson's depository for title deeds', and underneath in script, 'Antiquarian Society for Estate Research. Meetings Saturdays 9.00 p.m.' It struck her as a clever cover for the permanently closed windows - as a casual observer would have assumed that behind them were rooms stacked high with dusty files - and for the Satanists who gathered there on Saturday nights since, despite the derelict appearance of the house, people in the immediate neighbourhood must have known that it was occupied and that on certain evenings both cars and pedestrians turned down the cul-de-sac to it.
Next moment, as Ratnadatta rang the bell, her mind was again filled with nervous fears about the test they intended to give her. Barney had said that to play with Black Magic was to play with filth as well as fire, and she knew that he was right. Whatever they asked her to do would, she felt sure, be against her conscience, and it might call for some act so physically disgusting that nausea would render her unable to accomplish it. Now, with a sudden sick feeling of apprehension, she followed Ratnadatta out from behind the blackout curtain into the brightly lit hall. But there she learnt that she was at least to be given a short respite. As one of the negro footmen advanced to take their coats, the Indian waved him aside and said to her:
'We haf some while to wait, and it ees a fine evening. We go to the garden and if not too cold sit there a little.' Then he took her along a passage to the back of the house and out through a door that opened on to a balustraded terrace from which three flights of steps, flanked with lead urns, led down to a lower level.
Not unnaturally, Mary had expected to find the back of the house as derelict as its front, and the garden a tangle of weeds or, at best, a starved lawn with a few struggling trees and shrubs; but, on the contrary, it was as beautiful as any garden in a city could be.
The tall walls enclosed an area of about half an acre and above them could be seen only a few chimney-pots of neighbouring houses. There was no grass, for the garden was laid out in the Italian style with gravel walks, flower beds with box edgings, carved stone seats, fountains, trellissed arbours and many fine pieces of statuary. Down its middle ran a pleached alley; to one side there was a large swimming pool; on the other, an open area of equal size, paved with a mosaic in many colours, in the centre of which stood a stone plinth carrying a head crowned with a wreath.
The swimming pool was still empty and none of the flowers with which the beds were planted yet out; but, even so, on this last day of April, after several hours of sun, this wonderfully sheltered spot was a pleasant place to stroll in. After walking down the alley they came back across the open space and, waving a pudgy hand about it, Ratnadatta said: