The Devil Rides Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

morning,’ then he promptly walked out of the room.
    â€˜He… he’s not really asleep is he?’ asked Rex, looking a little scared.
    â€˜Certainly, but he will remember everything that has taken place tomorrow because he is not in the deep somnambulistic state where I could order him to forget. To achieve that usually takes a little practice with a new subject.’
    â€˜Then he’ll be pretty livid I’ll promise you. Fancy hanging a Nazi swastika round the neck of a professing Jew.’
    â€˜My dear Rex! Do please try and broaden your outlook a little. The swastika is the oldest symbol of wisdom and right thinking in the world. It has been used by every race and in every country at some time or other. You might just as well regard the Cross as purely Christian, when we all know it was venerated in early Egypt, thousands of years before the birth of Christ. The Nazis have only adopted the swastika because it is supposed to be of Aryan origin and part of their programme aims at welding together a large section of the Aryan race. The vast majority of them have no conception of its esoteric significance and even if they bring discredit upon it, as the Spanish Inquisition did upon the Cross, that could have no effect upon its true meaning.’
    â€˜Yes, I get that, though I doubt if it’ll make any difference to Simon’s resentment when he finds it round his neck tomorrow. Still, that’s a minor point. What worries me is this whole box of tricks this evening. I’ve got a feeling you ought to be locked up as downright insane, unless it’s me.’
    De Richleau smiled. ‘A strange business to be happening in modern London, isn’t it? But let’s mix a drink and talk it over quietly.’
    â€˜Strange! Why, if it were true it would be utterly fantastic, but it’s not. All this hooha about Black Magic and talking hocus-pocus while you hang silly charms round Simon’s neck is utter bunk.’
    â€˜It is?’ The Duke smiled again as he tipped a lump of ice into Rex’s glass and handed it to him. ‘Well, let’s hear
your
explanation of Simon’s bizarre behaviour. I suppose you do consider that’
    â€˜Of course, but nothing like as strange as you’re trying to make out. As I seeit Simon’s taken up spiritualism or something of the kind and plenty of normal earnest people believe in that, but you know what he is when he gets keen on a thing, everything else goes to the wall and that’s why he has neglected you a bit.
    â€˜Then this evening he was probably sick as mud to miss our dinner, but had a séance all fixed that he couldn’t shelve at the last moment. We butt in on his party, and naturally he doesn’t care to admit what he’s up to is in any way odd, so he spins a yarn about it being an astronomical society. So you, who’ve read a sight too many books, and seem to have stored up all the old wives’ tales your nurse told you in your cradle, get a bee in your bonnet and slog the poor mut under the jaw.’
    De Richleau nodded. ‘I can hardly expect you to see it any other way at the moment, but let’s start at the beginning. Do you agree that after knocking him out I called into play a supernormal power in order to send him cheerfully off to bed without a single protest?’
    â€˜Yes, even the doctors admit hypnotic influence now, and Simon would never have stood for you tying that swastika under his chin if he’d been conscious.’
    â€˜Good. Then at least we are at one on the fact that certain forces can be called into play which the average person does not understand. Now, if instead of practising that comparatively simple exercise in front of you, I had done it before ignorant natives, who had never heard of hypnotism, they would term it magic, would they not?’
    â€˜Sure.’
    â€˜Then go a step further. If, by a greater exertion of the same power, I