Free Strange Conflict by Dennis Wheatley Page A

down and doze in the dark. I mean to provide both you and Rex with alarm clocks so that you’ll wake in good time.’
    When Marie Lou, Simon and Rex had left them Richard sealed the main door of the room and made up the fire while the Duke switched out all the lights and lit the five long white candles from an old-fashioned tinder-box. They then both entered the pentacle.
    The Duke performed the ceremony of sealing the nine openings of his own body with certain mystic signs and said a short prayer asking for power, guidance and protection upon his astral journey, then got into bed while Richard settled himself on his Li-Lo.
    They wished each other good night and the Duke turned over on his side. The silence was broken only by the gentle scratching of pencil on paper, as Richard began his article, and the faint hissing of the fire. De Richleau had said that in this first step there was little likelihood of his running into danger, but Richard was not so sure; the leprous, sacklike Thing, crepitating with horrid laughter, which he had seen in that room in very similar circumstances some years before, had left an indelible impression on his memory. He did not want to start imagining things or to fall asleep, and that was why he had decided to attempt a little article on the extremely prosaic matter of poultry-feeding; it should keep his mind on normal things without being of sufficient interest to distract him from his watch. Afteralmost every sentence that he wrote he paused to give a swift glance round.
    The steady ticking of a clock came faintly from somewhere in the depths of the house. Occasionally a log fell with a loud plop in the grate, then the little noises of the night were hushed and an immense silence, brooding and mysterious, seemed to have fallen upon them. In some strange way it did not seem as though the quiet, octagonal room was any longer a portion of the house. There was something a little unreal about the great chalked pentacle in the centre of which they reposed, with its vessels of charged water, bunches of herbs and horseshoes dotted here and there, but the five long, tapering candles burned with a steady flame so Richard knew that all was well.
    The distant clock chimed the half-hour and Richard glanced at the Duke. His body was relaxed and he was breathing evenly. That dauntless spirit had left its mortal case of flesh and had gone out into the Great Beyond upon the strangest mission ever attempted in the Second World War.

5
The Admiral Goes Aloft
    As he dropped off to sleep the Duke hovered for a little above his own body, looking down on to it and at Richard quietly writing beside the makeshift bed; then he felt the full strength of his spiritual being fill his astral body and a simple thought was enough to cause him to pass out of the house on his way to London.
    In a matter of seconds he was poised above the great, sprawling city. An air-raid was in progress and he paused for a moment to view with interest London as it must appear to a Nazi airman. The broad, curving serpent of the Thames was clearly visible, and that alone was sufficient for him to identify various districts, but away from the river it was clear that the Nazi raiders could make only the vaguest guess as to when they were over their targets except on a night when the moon was particularly bright. The black-out was undoubtedly efficient, since although pin-points of light could be seen as far as the eye could reach in every direction they were no more than glimmers, so that it was impossible to detect any pattern in their dispositions which might have given away the situation of broad thoroughfares, railway-stations or big buildings.
    The gunfire was sporadic, but in certain cases the flashes were so bright that for a second they lit the whole area in which the more powerful anti-aircraft batteries were situated. Two largish fires were burning, one in the neighbourhood of Chelsea and another much further down the river, either