Strange Conflict by Dennis Wheatley Page B

for your private addresses in case I wanted to get in touch with you urgently,’ lied the Duke smoothly.
    An hour later he was with Rex, Simon and Richard in the latter’s car running through the half-empty streets of bomb-torn London on the way to Worcestershire.
    The last part of their journey had to be done in theblackout, but Richard knew the way so well that when they left the great arterial road he had no difficulty in twisting through the narrow country lanes until he drove through the open park-gates and pulled up in front of his lovely country home.
    The east wing of the rambling old house was very ancient and said to have been at one time part of a great abbey, but centuries later these thick-walled remains had been built on to, while in recent years Richard and his lovely wife, the some-time Princess Marie Louise Héloise Aphrodite Blankfort De Cantezane de Schulemoff, had spared neither pains nor money to make its interior both comfortable and beautiful. The heavy, oak, nail-studded door was no sooner opened by Malin, Richard’s elderly butler, than Marie Lou herself came running forward to welcome them.
    She was a tiny person with chestnut curls, a heart-shaped face and big, violet eyes which gave her a certain resemblance to a Persian kitten. In spite of her diminutive size and her slim feet, hands, wrists and ankles, she was plump in all the right places, so that de Richleau often said that she was the most exquisite creature that he had ever seen, and many people nicknamed her ‘Richard’s Pocket Venus’. Their devotion to each other had remained absolute ever since the days when he had found her among the Siberian snows and brought her out of the Forbidden Territory to be his wife.
    They embraced as though they had not met for months, and when at last he released her she said breathlessly: ‘Darling, I only had your telegram an hour ago, although you send it off last night. None of the rooms are ready yet, but the maids are busy lighting the fires and putting bottles in the beds, and it’s too lovely for words to have you all here again.’ As she spoke she tiptoed from one to the other, giving each a swift kiss upon the cheek.
    Malin had gone out to unload the car as the Duke smiled down at her. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well, Princess, because I have a somewhat unusual request to make. It is that I should be allowed to sleep in the library.’
    â€˜Greyeyes, darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘Surely you, of all people, aren’t afraid of bombs! We haven’t had one within miles of Cardinals Folly, so you’ll be perfectly safe in yourold room upstairs; but of course you can sleep in the library if you prefer.’
    â€˜No, it’s not fear of bombs that has brought me out of London, my dear, but something much more desperate.’
    Her face suddenly went serious and she nodded quickly. ‘All right, then. But come inside. At least I’ve had time to mix the cocktails.’
    Richard made a grimace as he followed her into the long, low drawing-room which in summer had such a lovely view through its french windows over the terraced garden. ‘I’m afraid our luck’s out, darling; we’re all on the wagon.’
    She stopped dead and her eyes grew rounder, showing just a trace of fear as she stared at de Richleau. ‘The library—no drinks!—you—you don’t mean that one of you is threatened again by something awful from the other side?’
    â€˜No,’ the Duke reassured her, ‘but it has fallen to us to break a lance against Hitler on the astral.’
    â€˜I don’t like it,’ she said suddenly, ‘I don’t like it.’
    Richard put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Darling, the Blacks are getting information into Germany by occult means—at least, that’s what we believe—and someone’s got to go out from Earth to try to stop them. As you know very well, one