Sam, on the other hand, was motionless, seeming rapt in the study of a curry-stain on the tablecloth.

Jock came in and cleared things away while George and Sam maintained their silences. I was damned if I was going to help them start the ball rolling; indeed, it occurred to me that many worthy people would say that I was damned already.

‘All right,’ said Sam at last. ‘I’m prepared to give it a crack of the whip. If the swine’s as demented as he seems to be, then I suppose we can best fight him with this insane garbage.’

George nodded slowly.

‘Probably the only language he understands,’ he said in a sort of gritty, country-magistrate’s voice. ‘Distasteful. Probably useless. Certainly expensive. But, as Charlie says, what else comes to mind? Seen stranger things than this taking effect, now I come to think of it. Yes; in India, places like that.’

‘You men do realize,’ I said, ‘that you’ll have to sort of participate, don’t you? I mean, there’s one or two rather dreary things that have to be done during the Mass, you see, and the unfrocked priest will, so to speak, have his hands full for much of the time.’

‘Yes,’ said Sam.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said George. ‘But I’m damned if I’m memorizing any Black Paternosters backwards or any of that rot.’

‘Black Paternosters?’ I asked. ‘Have you been studying the subject a bit, George?’

‘We’ve all read our Dennis Wheatley at some time or another, Charlie,’ said Sam.

‘Speak for yourself!’ I said sharply.

‘Let me get it clear in my head,’ George said. ‘This mummery is supposed to discourage the witch-chap and make him feel that we’re as well in with demons and things as he is, so he’d better lay off, is that it?’

‘More or less, but there’s a bit more to it than that. You see, it embodies a fairly hefty curse which is supposed to make the object of our attentions waste away and die nastily, so if our man really believes in what he’s doing and is familiar with this particular ritual – and Dryden is pretty sure he does and is – he ought to be thoroughly scared and might well give up his activities altogether.’

‘West African witch-doctors can still do it,’ said George. ‘Thousands of well-documented cases. If the victim really believes he’s going to die on a certain day he just jolly well lies down and dies.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ Sam asked slowly, ‘that there’s a chance that this thing might actually kill our man?’

‘Well, yes, I’m afraid it seems quite possible.’

‘Excellent. When do we start?’

‘Just one moment,’ said George, ‘it’s occurred to me – how does the fellow know that this Mass has been performed and what Mass it is and who’s on the receiving end and so on?’