As his breathing eased a little, he swung round to plunge back into the wood. But he had taken only a few steps before he pulled up. The ruined Abbey must be anything between a quarter and half a mile away. In the fog and darkness nothing but a fluke could lead him back to it direct, and he might wander about in the wood for an hour or more without finding it.

Besides, when he did, what was he going to do? His gun had been taken from him by one of the American's coloured boys. He had intended to ask for it back after supper; but Lothar's arrival had precipitated a series of events which had denied him the chance to do so. Even if Lothar had been rendered hors de combat by the blaze as the crucifix hit his face, there was still the giant American and the dozen men who made up his coven. Barney was far from being a coward and he had the greatest difficulty in resisting the urge to make an immediate attempt to rescue Mary; but he knew that on his own he could not possibly succeed.

He groaned again, leant against a tree and, covering his face with his hands, endeavoured to make up his mind about the best course to take. To bring the police on the scene was the obvious answer; but how could that be done most quickly? After a moment he decided that the best bet would be to get hold of one of the Satanists' cars and drive in to Cambridge. Even if he could have found a house with a telephone fairly quickly, it might prove difficult to convince the police that he really needed the help of at least a dozen of them, and urgently; whereas if he went to a police station he had only to show his official pass to secure immediate assistance.

At a run he set off along the edge of the trees, but he had completely lost his bearings and actually was on the far side of the wood from the track along which the cars had come to it. After he had been running for several minutes, the wood ended in a right angle. Turning the corner he ran on, only to find that this side of the wood seemed longer than that on which he had come out; but having covered some distance along it he struck a path. To the right it led into the fog-shrouded wood, to the left to a cottage some hundred yards away, of which against the paler sky he could just make out the chimney and the roof line.