Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [21]
Down the stairs came a little procession. Hey! It was the girl and some other fellow with that Doctor! Supposed to be dying, wasn't he?
'Hullo, you better?' said Bert, 'I thought you'd had it.'
'Fortunately, no,' replied the Doctor.
'But are you sure you're okay?' fussed Jo. 'Better come and sit down.'
'She's right, you know,' agreed Mike. 'You ought to take it gently for a bit.'
'I tell you I've recovered completely,' said the Doctor. 'It was a bit parky there for a while, I'll admit, but it soon warmed up.'
'I'll say it did!' said Jo.
'The final confirmation of my theory, that wave of heat,' the Doctor went on.
'You mean, you know what caused it?'
'Yes, Jo, I think so.'
'Tell us then.'
'No, not just yet. I have to be sure. I'm going up to the dig.'
Jo shuddered. 'Oh, Doctor, haven't you had enough of that place?'
Before the Doctor could reply, the front door was flung open and Miss Hawthorne, hair awry, staggered in, supporting Sergeant Benton. For a long moment nobody moved
'If I drop him,' said Miss Hawthorne, a trifle plaintively, 'he'll go a dreadful wallop.'
At once Mike Yates and the Doctor, all apologies, hastened to relieve her of her burden.
'He's out on his feet,' exclaimed Mike, as they helped him onto a bench.
'Whatever's happened to him?' asked Jo.
'He's been beaten up,' replied Mike. 'By an expert, I'd say.'
'You might indeed say that; you might indeed.' Miss Hawthorne sank exhausted into a chair. 'Oh dear, oh dear. He's a very heavy young man.'
Bert looked at the bruised Sergeant. 'He's in a bad way. I'd better fetch Doctor Reeves.'
'No need for that,' said the Doctor, looking up from his examination of Benton 's injuries. 'I am medically qualified myself. Now then, let me see. No bones broken, thank goodness, and no open wounds. No internal ruptures... Mm. He's a lucky young man. Slight concussion, a few nasty bruises and, of course, shock.'
The Sergeant was shaking his head gently from side to side as if to find out whether it were still attached to his body. He looked round at the anxious group. His eye lighted on the Doctor.
'Doctor...'
'No, no, don't try to speak. Just sit quietly.'
Benton leaned back and closed his eyes. The Doctor looked over at Bert. 'You are our host, I take it?'
Bert grinned a little uncertainly. 'Could call me that, I suppose. I'm the landlord, yes.'
'The best medicine friend Benton could have would be some hot sweet tea. How about it?'
Bert nodded and made his way towards the kitchen.
'Thank you,' said the Doctor. 'And thank you, Miss Hawthorne, for looking after him.'
'You know who I am?'
'Indeed I do. If only they had listened to you.'
'If only they had. I shall be eternally grateful to this young man. It is thanks to him that I am alive to tell the world what I have seen.' Her manner was so intense that it compelled attention.
'And what have you seen, Miss Hawthorne?'
She paused, relishing the moment. 'Why, Doctor,' she said. 'I have seen the Devil.'
There moment of silence; a moment of disbelief, of amusement even—but but also a moment tinged with cold horror, which touched everyone present, even the Doctor himself.
'I think you'd better tell us the whole story,' he said.
And so Miss Hawthorne told them of the attack upon her and her incarceration in the chest; of her rescue by Benton ; of their being surprised by the villainous Garvin...
'And it was this verger fellow who worked over poor old Benton ?' asked Mike.
'No, no, no. That was done by the elementals in the Cavern.'
'Elementals?' Mike was way out of his depth.
'Impersonal primitive spirits. One can learn to control them. These were controlled by evil...'
Jo took a long shuddering breath. 'And you say you actually saw... the Devil?'
'Yes, my dear. Satan, Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, the Horned Beast; call him what you will. He was there.'