The Satanist by Dennis Wheatley Page B

go up the steps and let herself in, then he told the taxi to drive him to his rooms in Warwick Square.
    While undressing, Mary did her best to re-assess the relationship between them, of which only she was aware the views he had expressed, obviously with complete honesty, on a man’s obligations, or lack of them, to a girl with whom he had slept, depending on whether she had given herself to him for love or for money, had made a considerable impression on her. In fact, as a general principle, she found it difficult not to accept them. But, having for five years nurtured a bitter grudge against him as theauthor of all her personal sufferings, she found it impossible to dissociate him from them overnight.
    The carefree attitude that he still displayed to life, his passing himself off as a lord, and his taking it for granted that she would let him make love to her after only a few hours spent in his company, all combined to reinforce her belief that he was cynical, unscrupulous, heartless, and a menace to any woman who was fool enough to fall for him. But in this case it was he who had fallen for her. The anxiety he had displayed about her meeting Ratnadatta on Saturday evening, and his eagerness to see her again, was, she felt, ample evidence of that; and as she dropped off to sleep she was savouring in advance the triumph she would enjoy when she had led him on into a state in which she would make him utterly miserable with frustrated desire.
    On the Saturday evening she duly kept her appointment with Ratnadatta at Sloane Square Tube Station. Sleek, paunchy, his brown eyes expressionless behind the pebble lenses, but his rabbit teeth protruding in an ingratiating smile, he greeted her most politely, then beckoned up the leading taxi on the rank.
    He was dressed as she had seen him on previous occasions, in a pale blue suit of thinnish material, over which he now had a light fawn overcoat. Apart from the colour of his skin, the only indications of his Eastern origin were that his hat was of the kind habitually worn by Mr. Nehru, and that he smelled strongly of scent. As they got into the taxi Mary caught a pungent whiff of it; but to that she was far from objecting, as during their talks together at Mrs. Wardeel’s she had several times had to suppress an impulse to back away from him on account of his breath. It had a curiously sweet yet unpleasant odour like that of bad lobster, and she hoped that his having scented himself so lavishly this evening would help to counteract it.
    The taxi took them only half-a-mile then pulled up outside a small restaurant in Chelsea. Its Eurasian proprietor welcomed Ratnadatta as a valued patron and, bowing them to the back of the restaurant, led them upstairs to asmall room in which a table was laid for two.
    Although her host was on the youthful side of middleage, it had somehow not occurred to Mary that he might have amorous designs upon her. But from her black year she was well aware of the use to which such private diningrooms were usually put and, as her glance fell on a sofa against one wall, she was seized with swift revulsion at the thought of such an encounter with him.
    Catching her uneasy look, he said quickly, ‘You haf no objection, plees; the things off weech we shall talk are not for other ears.’
    Momentarily reassured, she replied: ‘Yes, of course. I quite understand.’
    When the menu was produced he urged her to order whatever she fancied, so she chose potted shrimps, a tournedo and Coupe Jacques; on which he said that the same would suit him too.
    As the proprietor left the room, she remarked, ‘I thought that Theosophists who have achieved initiation had to become vegetarians.’
    He chuckled. ‘Those who are Theosophists only are little people. They know nothing. We off the Brotherhood haf passed beyond such senseless taboos. Off commandments we haf but one, “Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole off the Law”.’
    She smiled back at him. ‘That sounds an easy