Strange Conflict (37 page)

Simon's plan was a very simple one and he had hatched it hours before. He was quite capable of following and taking part in a discussion while at the same time thinking of someone completely different, and during the whole session the Doctor had done nine-tenths of the talking, so Simon had had ample opportunity to consider the situation from every angle.

He was now absolutely convinced that when the Doctor went to sleep he did not mean to bother about the enemies that he had lured into his house; he would go out to lie in wait for Rex and Richard. If he could prevent their return he would be able to deal with the others at his leisure and during the coming day would derive a sadistic delight from watching them show signs of ever-increasing fatigue until they finally succumbed. Simon had decided that the best service he could possibly render, and indeed, as far as he could see, the only one which offered any hope of saving them all, was to carry the war into the enemy's camp. At whatever risk to himself, he must endeavour to sabotage the Doctor's plan so that Richard and Rex could escape his attack and manage to rejoin them.

According to what de Richleau had said, since their two friends had failed to return before sundown, and there
were no night-landing facilities at Port-au-Prince, there was now no hope of their arriving until dawn. Evidently the Doctor had taken that into his calculations—hence his willingness to stay up talking until the small hours. He knew that the other would not take off from Kingston airport until two hours before sunrise; so, providing he was asleep by five or even six o'clock he would still have ample time in which to attack them during the latter half of their journey. Simon had set himself the task of keeping the Doctor awake until well after sun-up and he had spent a considerable portion of the last few hours in thinking of methods which might best enable him to do so.

Had his gun not gone down with the plane he would have been extremely tempted to whip it out and shoot the Doctor where he stood, taking a chance that, de Richleau and Marie Lou being asleep, their astrals were in the immediate neighbourhood. They could then have seized upon the Evil spirit at the moment of blackout immediately following death and have imprisoned it, thus accomplishing in one daring stroke the victory that they had set out to gain. But if the astrals of his friends were not in the vicinity the Doctor's spirit would escape and, since they had no protection, would have
them
at his mercy. So the risk was great. But in any case he had no gun or other means of meting out swift death to the Satanist, so he was not called upon to gamble with the fate of them all.

The obvious course was to endeavour to wound the Doctor or to hurt him so much that he would be unable to sleep on account of the pain; but that was easier said than done. The Mulatto had the appearance of a man of about sixty but he was powerfully built, and Simon, who was very frail, felt certain that he would get the worst of any physical encounter. Only a surprise attack could inflict the requisite type of injury, and such an attack is not easy when one's opponent is fully aware of one's animosity, quick-witted and prepared for any eventuality.

Nevertheless Simon was a redoubtable opponent when he set his shrewd brain to work and he had taken considerable care to review every portion of the human body in relation both to the pain it can give when harmed and to its accessibility for swift attack.

In those desperate minutes after the Doctor's revelation
about Philippa, Simon had kept his eyes cast down so that his enemy should not be able to read his thoughts. Suddenly he lifted his right foot knee-high and, with all the force he was capable brought the point of his heel crashing down upon the Satanist's left instep.

The Mulatto staggered back, his face contorted with agony. The sharp heel-edge had dug right down into the delicate tendons of his instep, just above his shoe-lace, and as Simon ground the hard edge home one of the small fragile bones which make up the arch of the foot snapped under the stab.

As the Doctor dragged free his foot he panted slightly and his eyes seemed to start out of his yellow face with the intensity of their malevolence. He made no move to strike at Simon, but lifting his injured foot he whispered: ‘By Baron Cimeterre, I swear you shall pay for that.'

But Simon had only started. The infliction of the wound was less than half his plan. Seizing the large oil-lamp from the table, he picked it up and hurled it at the Doctor's head.

By ducking the Doctor escaped the dangerous missile but under the suddenness and violence of the attack he gave back and turned to stagger from the room. The lamp crashed in a far corner and the oil ran out in a sheet of flame which greedily leapt up the flimsy curtains. Next moment Simon had jumped upon a chair. There was another oil-lamp, swinging from a beam in the centre of the room. Wrenching this away from its sockets—holder and all—he hurled that, too, after his retreating enemy.

The second lamp also missed the Doctor, but as it burst, another great pool of flaming oil ran across the wooden floor, devouring the rush mats as it went. In a few moments the house would be on fire, just as Simon had deliberately planned that it should be.

‘Now, damn you, sleep if you can!' Simon screamed, and, leaping from the chair, he rushed out of the room to rouse de Richleau and Marie Lou.

They were sleeping as they had fallen, fully dressed, upon their beds, and at first Simon thought that he would never be able to wake them. He shouted at Marie Lou and pulled her up into a sitting position, but she only flopped back again with a little groan. Desperate measures were necessary
and he had to smack her face hard before any semblance of consciousness returned to her. The Duke proved equally difficult to rouse, and five precious minutes had fled before Simon had them both on their feet and they had taken in his garbled account of what had happened.

Still half-asleep, the other two stumbled after him as he raced back to the living-room. During the whole of his brief, violent attack on the Doctor, Philippa had not moved a muscle; she had just remained sitting in her chair, staring blankly in front of her. The fire had taken a rapid hold upon the wooden buildings and as they entered the sitting-room they saw that it was now half-obscured by flames and smoke. Philippa's chair was empty, but suddenly she emerged from the centre of the smoke-screen. Evidently she had tried to follow the Doctor to his room but had been unable to do so.

As she lurched towards them they momentarily recoiled in horror. Her great eyes were staring, her mouth was wide open in a strangled scream, but no sound came from it. Her hair and her clothes were on fire and she seemed distraught with agony.

In a second, de Richleau had off his coat and flung it round her, while Marie Lou and Simon strove to beat out the flames from her burning skirt with their bare hands. Somehow they succeeded, just before she fainted and slid down among them to the floor.

The greater part of the room was now a glowing furnace and the only door as yet unattacked by the crackling flames was that leading to the guests' bedrooms. The Duke and Simon grabbed Philippa up and, pulling her through it, carried her out by way of the nearest room on to the verandah.

Further along it they could see the fire had already spread to the dining-room and that unless it was swiftly checked it would soon be devouring the Doctor's bedroom and study. They could hear him, somewhere on the other side of the pall of smoke and flying sparks, shouting to his house-boys, and the sound of heavy running feet. For one brief moment Simon allowed himself to savour his triumph as he exclaimed viciously:

‘Not much chance of that swine getting to sleep tonight now.' Then he turned his attention back to the poor, soulless body that they knew as Philippa.

De Richleau was already examining her and he said despondently: ‘The poor girl's got terrible burns on her head, arms and legs. We must get her down to the hospital as quickly as we possibly can.'

‘She—she's not a girl at all—she's a Zombie,' Simon jerked out. ‘Doctor Saturday told me—said so himself just before I went for him.'

‘What's a Zombie?' asked Marie Lou in a puzzled voice.

De Richleau answered grimly. ‘Zombies are bodies without souls—dead people who have been called back from the grave to serve the Witch Doctor who has captured their souls. How utterly frightful!'

In a few swift sentences Simon told them what the Doctor had said of Philippa's history.

The Duke nodded. ‘I should think, then, all the house-boys are Zombies too. But although Zombies can't talk they can feel, so this wretched body that we call Philippa is suffering every bit as much as if the girl's spirit were in it. We must get her to the hospital just the same. Heave her up, Simon, over my shoulders. It's only about quarter of an hour's walk down to the edge of the town and with any luck we'll meet help on the way.'

They bundled Philippa's body across the Duke's back in a fireman's lift and bowed under her weight he staggered down the verandah steps with Marie Lou leading the way and Simon behind to protect the small party's rear. To carry the body was a considerable effort for the Duke, and every hundred yards or so he had to rest for a moment, but when they had covered half a mile they met an early market-cart which was coming down a forked road towards the town.

Although they could not speak Creole the great fat mammy who was driving grasped the situation and helped to arrange the unconscious form upon her bunches of vegetables. Whipping her miserable donkey into an ambling trot, she drove straight to the hospital, while the others ran and walked beside the little cart.

At the hospital they were relieved of her charge by a Mulatto nurse, who was called a Negro house-surgeon.
After what they had heard of Haiti it was a pleasant surprise to find that the hospital at least would have rivalled any European institution in a similar-sized town for its cleanliness, its equipment and the evident efficiency of its staff, all of whom spoke passably good French. Philippa's charred garments were cut off her and under a light covering she was swiftly wheeled away on a trolley for her burns to be treated. The others, meanwhile, were asked to sit down and wait for the surgeon's report in a bare but not uncomfortable room.

While they waited they discussed the happenings of the night and de Richleau gave unstinted praise to Simon for his well-planned, courageous and skilfully-delivered attack on the enemy.

The Duke said that normally any
Black
as powerful as the Doctor would be able to overcome his own pain and throw himself into a self-induced trance, but that having set fire to his house would almost certainly prevent him from doing that. He would naturally be extremely anxious to save the valuable magical impedimenta, which he doubtless kept somewhere in his study, and other possessions, so the chances were that it would be at least a couple of hours before he had salvaged what he could and found a room in some neighbour's house in which to sleep.

Simon had started the fire at about twenty minutes past three. It was now just on four. Another two hours would bring them to six, and it would take the Satanist at least a further hour to subdue the acute pain in his foot before he could get to sleep; so there was very little likelihood of his being able to leave his body before seven and the probability was that he would not succeed in getting out of it until considerably later. Owing, therefore, to the skilfulness of Simon's stategy there was good reason to hope that he would have no time in which to work upon the astral before dawn, and they all felt confident that Rex and Richard would set out from Kingston at the earliest possible moment which would enable them to make a daylight landing at Port-au-Prince.

Half an hour later the Negro surgeon came down to tell them that Philippa's burns were extremely severe and that he would not be able to answer for her life, but that it was difficult to tell yet if she would survive her injuries. He
was a kind and friendly man and, seeing their depressed state, insisted on one of the nurses bringing them some hot coffee laced with rum to put them into better heart. When they had drunk it, he suggested that they should come back in the course of a few hours, by which time he hoped to have further news for them.

It was half-past five when they went out into the street and they saw that the sky was already paling to a faint grey over the mountains to the east. Having walked out of the town and a little way back along the road up to the Doctor's house, they turned a corner, fringed by a great growth of dense vegetation, and suddenly had a full view of it. Any efforts to check the fire had clearly failed. The centre of the house had collapsed, dense smoke was billowing from the building, and its two ends were now a mass of flame, so there was no doubt at all that it must be totally consumed within another hour.

Comforted a little at having inflicted such a grievous blow upon the enemy, they turned back and slowly covered the two miles down to the harbour. Soon after they reached it dawn broke and the sky beyond the hills became a fantastic, fiery sea of vivid reds and golds.

The port was now waking to the coming day. Fishing-boats with worn and patched sails were putting out, the café-keepers were taking down the gimcrack shutters of the bars along the water-front, and a gang of Negroes were chanting melodiously in the distance as they heaved upon the hawsers of a tramp steamer that was just about to put to sea.

De Richleau and his friends stood scanning the sky towards the west, hoping that at any moment now they might discern the speck which would transpire to be Richard and Rex in a hired plane returning to them. For over an hour they waited there, staring out across the blue bay and the coast to either side of the harbour with its fringes of ragged palm trees, many of which had been truncated by a hurricane; but although the sun was up and full daylight flooded the scene, no longed-for speck appeared to gladden their eyes and fill their hearts with new hope.

Owing to Simon's stratagems Marie Lou and the Duke had managed to get in over five hours' sound sleep, so in
spite of the night's excitements they were feeling fairly refreshed, but it was now more than twenty-four hours since Simon himself had slept and he in turn was beginning to feel very worn and heavy-eyed.