'Well, all Black Magic rituals are based on sex or, to use more appropriate words, unbridled lust, perversion and obscenity. If you ever succeed in getting inside a Satanic Temple, you will be expected to witness and applaud acts which would turn the stomach of a member of the vice-squad, let alone a decent young woman like yourself. But that would be only after your own initiation. And that's the hurdle you'd have to take before you could get anywhere. You don't need me to tell you what a lovely person you are, and they are not going to give you a ring-side seat for nowt. Your entry ticket would be having to give yourself to the man who introduced you into the circle.'

Mary Morden dropped her eyes again. 'I can only hope that he wouldn't be too repulsive.'

'What!' C.B. sat forward suddenly. ' D'you mean you would?'

'Yes.' She looked up and met his glance squarely. 'I'd better be frank with you, Colonel Verney. I grew up in the back streets of Dublin and became a cabaret girl. For reasons with which I won't bother you there came a time when I had to have more money than my pay. Cabaret girls get plenty of opportunities to earn money the so-called easy way, and those who do don't think of themselves as prostitutes. But, to be brutally honest, that's what I was for the best part of a year. And, believe me, even with girls such as I was, who don't have to go to bed with every man who asks them to, it's not easy money. There are times when men who seem to be decent sorts turn out to be absolute swine, and to earn a few pounds that way is like suddenly finding oneself in hell.

'Four years ago Teddy took me out of that. He knew the sort of life I had been leading, but all the same he married me. I'm not going to tell you that he was my one great love. The fact is, I've never had one; but I was terribly fond of him. He gave me security, a decent home, respectability, everything that any reasonable woman could want except a child, and I made him a good and faithful wife.

'But now that is all over. I've no family. I'm on my own again. With his pension and a little capital he inherited from an uncle I'll be free from want; but by killing Teddy some fiend robbed the world of an honest, decent, kindly man, and robbed me of everything that made life worth while. So I'll not stick at using my looks, and my body too, if need be, in an attempt to get even with his murderer.'