on the same day.
They might also all have been taken of Lisette Seyrig.
However, Dr Magnus knew that it would be possible to see Beth Garrington and Lisette Seyrig together.
And he prayed he would be in time to prevent this.
With this knowledge tormenting his thoughts, it was a miracle that Dr Magnus had held on to sanity well enough to persuade New Scotland Yard to make this late-night drive to Maida Vale—desperate, in view of what he knew to be true. He had suffered a shock as severe as any that night when they told him at last where Lisette had gone.
“She’s quite all right. She’s staying with a friend.”
“Might I ask where?”
“A chauffeured Rolls picked her up. We checked registration, and it belongs to a Miss Elisabeth Garrington in Maida Vale.”
Dr Magnus had been frantic then, had demanded that they take him there instantly. A telephone call informed them that Miss Seyrig was sleeping under sedation and could not be disturbed; she would return his call in the morning.
Controlling his panic, Dr Magnus had managed to contrive a disjointed tangle of half-truths and plausible lies—anything to convince them to get over to the Garrington house as quickly as possible. They already knew he was one of those occult kooks. Very well, he assured them that Beth Garrington was involved in a secret society of drug fiends and Satanists (all true enough), that Danielle and Lisette had been lured to their most recent orgy for unspeakable purposes. Lisette had been secretly drugged, but Danielle had escaped to carry her roommate home before they could be used for whatever depraved rites awaited them—perhaps ritual sacrifice. Danielle had been murdered—either to shut her up or as part of the ritual—and now they had Lisette in their clutches as well.
All very melodramatic, but enough of it was true. Inspector Bradley knew of the sex and drugs orgies that took place there, but there was firm pressure from higher up to look the other way. Further, he knew enough about some of the more bizarre cult groups in London to consider that ritual murder was quite feasible, given the proper combination of sick minds and illegal drugs. And while it hadn’t been made public, the medical examiner was of the opinion that the slashes to the Borland girl’s throat and wrists had been an attempt to disguise the fact that she had already bled to death from two deep punctures through the jugular vein.
A demented killer, obviously. A ritual murder? You couldn’t discount it just yet. Inspector Bradley had ordered a car.
“Who are you, Lisette Seyrig, that you wear my face?”
Beth Garrington rose sinuously from her bed. She was dressed in an off-the-shoulder nightgown of antique lace, much the same as that which Lisette wore. Her green eyes—the eyes behind the mask that had so shaken Lisette when last they’d met—held her in their spell.
“When first faithful Adrian swore he’d seen my double, I thought his brain had begun to reel with final madness. But after he followed you to your little gallery and brought me there to see your portrait, I knew I had encountered something beyond even my experience.” Lisette stood frozen with dread fascination as her nightmare came to life. Her twin paced about her, appraising her coolly, as a serpent considers its hypnotized victim.
“Who are you, Lisette Seyrig, that yours is the face I have seen in my dreams, the face that haunted my nightmares as I lay dying, the face that I thought was my own?”
Lisette forced her lips to speak. “Who are you?”
“My name? I change that whenever it becomes prudent for me to do so. Tonight I am Beth Garrington. Long ago I was Elisabeth Beresford.”
“How can this be possible?” Lisette hoped she was dealing with a madwoman, but knew her hope was false.
“A spirit came to me in my dreams and slowly stole away my mortal life, in return giving me eternal life. You understand what I say, even though your reason insists that such things cannot be.”
She unfastened Lisette’s gown and let it fall to the floor, then did the same with her own. Standing face to face, their nude bodies seemed one a reflection of the other.
Elisabeth took Lisette’s face in her hands and kissed her full on the lips. The kiss was a long one; her breath was cold in Lisette’s mouth. When Elisabeth released her lips and gazed longingly into her eyes, Lisette saw the pointed fangs that now curved downward from her