Читать книгу Death Makes a Prophet - Ernest Elmore - Страница 12

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Mr. Penpeti stayed to tea. He also stayed to dinner. Even Eustace could not entirely detach himself from the wild enthusiasms swirling about him. A complete scheme for the Summer Convention had been drawn up. Numerical and astrological influences had been worked out so that the most suitable period of June could be chosen. Denise, under Mrs. Hagge-Smith’s direction, had already drawn up a summons to the members of the Inmost Temple to attend a committee meeting on the following day. Eustace and Penpeti had even sketched out a rough schedule of lectures, discussions, rituals, and so forth. Aware that Denise would almost certainly have to attend the convention, Terence was prepared to admit that Mrs. Hagge-Smith’s latest and most grandiose idea wasn’t such a bad bet after all. As for Penpeti, he was at his most forceful, charming and persuasive—every now and then veiling his hypnotic eyes behind their heavy lids, slipping away into a state of “non-being” and coming out of his trance with ever new and more splendid suggestions.

But behind all this activity it grew more and more evident that Eustace was simmering with irritation. He resented the free-handed way in which Penpeti gradually took command of the proceedings. Once or twice Peta actually overrode Mrs. Hagge-Smith’s opinions and substituted ideas of his own. And what was even more disturbing, Mrs. Hagge-Smith appeared quite ready to submit to his dictatorship. Everybody seemed ready to bow down before him.

When he left “Tranquilla” (which was the name of Mr. Mildmann’s mock-Tudor mansion) Penpeti was delighted with the way in which everything was progressing. His position inside the Movement was growing more and more secure and his influence over Mrs. Hagge-Smith more comprehensive. He sighed with the deepest satisfaction.

His rise had been swift. In less than eighteen months he had been promoted from a mere nonentity to the second most important person in the Order. Of course, he had been forced to walk warily, very warily; but now his patience and caution were beginning to pay big dividends. It was not only that he enjoyed the kudos and the five hundred a year that went with the office of Prophet-in-Waiting—it was more than that. Much more. The whole point was that, after a period of almost unbearable suspense, he was safe! Safe at last from the—

But at this juncture Peta Penpeti’s thoughts sheered away from all recollections of the past. It was better that way. Why summon up those dark unwanted spectres when he could exorcise them by a simple refusal to think about them? It would be only too easy to allow those smoky shadows of the past to haunt him and hound him into a pit of the deepest depression. But that way lay madness! After all, for eighteen months now he had been safe. And if safe for eighteen months, why not for ever? The fear that had once sniffed at his heels now seemed to have turned tail and given up the hunt. He was free once more to look ahead and relax. He must still walk warily, of course, but...

Suddenly, not five yards from his own front-gate, Penpeti stopped dead. In a flash all his reassuring arguments fled. A chill trickle of fear ran up his spine and left him trembling. From the gloom ahead a figure in a seedy mackintosh and black felt hat sidled up to him and placed a detaining hand on his arm. Penpeti recoiled as if from the clammy touch of a snake.

“Well?” he demanded in a low voice. “What is it? What do you want?”

“I think you can guess.”

“But look here, Yacob, you know I damned well can’t—”

“Think again, my dear fellow. Er...For your sake.”

For an instant Penpeti hesitated, then with a quick glance up and down the road, he muttered angrily:

“All right—come inside. I don’t want to be seen hanging about here with you.”

“That’s perfectly understandable,” said Yacob.

Penpeti opened the gate and Yacob followed him up the flagstone path and into the tiny unlighted hall. Not until he had groped his way into the little sitting-room and carefully drawn the curtains, did Penpeti switch on the light. Yacob blinked owlishly in the sudden glare, threw his black hat on to the settee and sat down beside it. Penpeti stood over him and scrutinised with unconcealed hatred those swarthy, dark-jowled features, the tawny, malignant eyes that looked up so mockingly into his own. Just now, of course, he had been wrong. Too optimistic. There was always Yacob—the predatory, unpredictable Yacob, wandering back at odd intervals into his life and forcing him to remember all he wanted to forget.

Perhaps, after all, he wasn’t quite so safe as he imagined. No, despite all his reassuring arguments, there was always Yacob!