When she reached the road, she glanced quickly from side to side. In the distance to her left there were low hills and below them, about two miles away, the roofs of some big aircraft hangars. To her right there was flatter country and the road ran along one side of a long shallow valley into which three aircraft were gliding. The hangars obviously formed part of the U.S. Air Force base, so turning her back on them she set off at a swift pace in the opposite direction.

She still had her handbag and in it ample money to get to London; but as soon as she came to a village she meant to telephone to Colonel Verney. There was no reason whatever to suppose that during the past forty-eight hours Ratnadatta had disposed of those incriminating shoes, and if he could be caught with them still in his possession she would have won her fight against at least one of Teddy's murderers. She would tell the Colonel too about the house in Cremorne, so that he might rope in the whole Satanic crew and, perhaps, find evidence there against others of them. But what about Wash?

The thought of the genial but evil giant presented her with an unexpected problem. Her sense of justice compelled her to admit that she had no personal cause for complaint against him. He had not taken her by force. Even his carrying her off from London had been largely due to her own folly in overplaying her hand with him. He obviously believed that she had been perfectly willing to stay with him and was thoroughly enjoying herself. More, he had both rescued her from Ratnadatta and saved her from initiation.

To that it had to be added that he was not a Satanist in the same sense as the others. He had not thrown off the tenets of a decent upbringing and all moral scruples to join a Lodge in order to acquire wealth or satiate his lust in wild orgies. He had been brought up from his childhood to worship the Devil, to practise magic and follow a creed, the only dictum of which was, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole of the Law.' It was evident that he had never regarded the world as anything but a jungle in which the strongest and most determined were fully justified in living well at the expense of weaker animals. That his mind had developed from infancy completely lacking all moral sense must be taken at least as some mitigation of his having shown no trace of scruple in bull-dozing his way to affluence by criminal means.