The Haunting of Toby Jugg (42 page)

Looking rather sweetly serious, she took them off with her, while I settled down to make this record of our conversation.

Was I, perhaps, inspired to start this journal before I even knew of her existence, so that she should one day read it? The workings of Providence are sometimes very strange; but perhaps Sally is the ‘honest person’ who will see the truth through the web of lies that Helmuth has spun, and set me free.

Thursday, 18th June

Anyone can imagine the state of suppressed excitement in which I awaited Sally’s verdict this morning. Her face told me nothing when she came in shortly after Konrad, to help me with my morning toilet.

As soon as we were alone together for a moment, I asked her if she had read it all, and she nodded.

‘Fortunately your writing is pretty legible, except in a few parts which were evidently written when you were overwrought, so I managed to get through it; but it took me till two in the morning. Konrad will be coming up with your breakfast in a moment, though; so I think we had better wait to discuss it until we are out on the terrace.’

So I had to contain my impatience for another hour; but as soon as we were comfortably settled in our corner of the battlements, she said:

‘It is an extraordinary document, Toby. I was tremendously impressed; but honestly, I don’t know what to say about it.’

‘The point is,’ I said a little abruptly, ‘having read it, do you consider that it is the work of a man who is sane or insane?’

‘Honestly, Toby, I can’t answer that.’ Her voice held an unhappy note. ‘Whether you imagine things or whether you don’t, there can be no doubt about it that you have been through absolute hell. I cried in places, I simply couldn’t help it.’

I think that is the nicest thing she has ever said to me. It almost made having gone through it all worth while, to have touched her heart like that. But the third day of Helmuth’s absence was nearly up; he will be back by this time tomorrow, so the paramount need for action forced me to say:

‘Thanks for your sympathy, Sally. I’m very grateful for that; but as I am situated it is not enough. I’m afraid I have placed you in a rotten situation. I wouldn’t have done so from choice, but I had to; because I am a prisoner here and you happen to be my gaoler, and there is no one else to whom I can appeal for help.

‘If I am still here when Helmuth gets back I am going to be sunk for good. You know that, from what you have read of his threats to me. If you consider that those threats are entirely the product of my imagination you will be fully justified in ignoring my plea. But if you feel that there is even a grain of truth in them you are now saddled with a very weighty responsibility. By helping to detain me here against my will you are not only aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy, but doing something which you know to be morally indefensible.’

She took that very well, and agreed in principle that I was right; but she continued to declare that as she had nothing but my
written word to go on it really was impossible for her to judge whether I had invented the more fantastic parts of my story or not. So for an hour or more we argued the matter, passing from the general to the particular, as I strove to convince her that every episode recorded was cold, hard fact.

There were two points in my favour. She had known a girl who had been at Weylands, so had some idea of the amoral principles that are inculcated there—which helped to lower Helmuth’s stock—and she was not at all sceptical about ghosts or the more usually accepted supernormal occurrences. Moreover, she admitted that my whole conception of the motive for a conspiracy was built up on sound logic. But she simply could not swallow the fact that Black Magic is still practised today, and that Helmuth has been employing Satanic power with the object of reducing me to a gibbering idiot.

‘All right, then,’ I said at last. ‘Let’s leave the Brotherhood, and the Great Spider, and the question of Helmuth being a servant of the Devil, out of it. If I can prove that he has told you a pack of lies, and slandered me outrageously, in connection with one particular episode, will that convince you that he has an ulterior motive in keeping me here, and induce you to help me get out of his clutches?’

After a moment she nodded. ‘Yes. If you can do that, it would satisfy me that he really is plotting to get hold of your money, and whether he is using occult power to aid him, or not, becomes beside the point. Either way it would be up to me to do what I can to protect you from his criminal intentions. But I don’t see how you are going to
prove
anything.’

‘I may be able to,’ I replied; ‘but I shall need your help. Getting you to read the journal at all only arose through your running into Deborah Kain in the village yesterday, and because I wanted you to know my side of that particular story. If you will go down to the village again, and get her to come up here, I’ll find a way to make her tell the truth; then you’ll see if it is Helmuth or I who has been lying.’

‘I can find her easily enough, because I know that she is living with the Gruffydds; but whether I can persuade her to come up here is quite another matter.’

‘If you tell her that Helmuth is away until tomorrow, so there is no chance of her running into him, I think I can guarantee that she’ll come back with you,’ I said with a smile. ‘I will write a little note for you to give her, and when she has read it I shall be very surprised if she does not agree to play.’

‘You mean to hold some threat over her?’ Sally frowned suspiciously.

‘I do,’ I admitted. ‘But only to get her up here. After that you shall see for yourself that I won’t use threats on her to get the truth.’

Turning my chair, I wheeled myself back into my room, got a sheet of notepaper and wrote on it:

My Dear Deb,

I am anxious to ask you a few questions, and it is of the utmost importance that I should put them to you at once; so would you be good enough to accompany Nurse Cardew back to the Castle.

In view of all you told me of your early life and political persuasions I am sure you will agree that it is much better that I should have this chat with you than to have to ask Mr. Gruffydd to come up to see me.

I addressed the envelope, then wheeled myself back to the terrace and showed the letter to Sally. When she had read it she said:

‘I remember, now, all that business about her being a Communist, that you got out of her when you had her in a hypnotic trance. You’re threatening to tell her fiancé. That is blackmail, you know!’

‘My dear Sally!’ I exclaimed impatiently. ‘I don’t care if it is theft, forgery, arson, and all the other crimes in the Newgate Calendar. I’d commit the lot to get out of here; and since you insist on my proving my words before you will help me to escape, it is you who are driving me to commit this one.’

‘I’m sorry, Toby.’ Her voice had become quite meek. ‘You’re right about me forcing you into this; but I’ve got to know the truth, and the sooner the better. It is nearly twelve o clock now, and it’s a good bet that she’ll be at the Gruffydds’ house at lunch-time. If I borrow a bicycle from one of the servants and start
right away, I shall be down in the village well before one. I’ll have a snack myself at the tea-shop, then if all goes well pick her up afterwards and be back here soon after two.’

So off Sally went, and at any moment now I am expecting her to return with Comrade Deborah Kain.

Later

I’ve won! But what a session; and what a revelation! I am writing this now only to fill in time, as, anxious as Sally and I are to get off, it would be madness to make a start until Konrad is out of the way for the night. And our interview with Deb is well worth recording.

When she arrived she was pretty sullen, which was hardly surprising; but she became almost pleasant when I apologised for having troubled her, and said that I only wanted to ask her some questions, to set Nurse Cardew’s mind at rest about certain things which it was suggested had happened here. Then I said:

‘I want you to tell the truth, even if it appears to be unfavourable to myself, and if you do so I give you my word that I will say nothing to Owen Gruffydd of what I know about your affairs. Now; while you were here, did I at any time make any amorous advances to you?’

She looked very surprised, gave a quick glance at Sally and said: ‘No. As a matter of fact I thought you were rather stand-offish. You were always quite polite, but you hardly seemed to notice me as a person at all.’

‘Right!’ I said. ‘When Dr. Lisický discovered that on several occasions I had hypnotised you, and had an explanation with you about that which led to your leaving, did he reveal to you, or even suggest, that I had taken advantage of you while you were in a trance state?’

‘No; he never said anything of that kind.’ Her eyes widened as she added: ‘Did you—did you do that?’

‘Certainly not,’ I replied. ‘But he seems to have given Nurse Cardew the impression that I did. Now, about the Doctor himself. Did he make amorous advances to you?’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘He did not.’

Her denial took me by surprise, as it seemed quite pointless in view of all I knew, and the fact that Helmuth had thrown her out bag and baggage.

‘Come, Deb!’ I admonished her. ‘I am not threatening you, and Nurse Cardew will promise not to repeat anything you may say to your detriment; but we want the truth. Dr. Lisický told me that you were his mistress, and you confirmed that to me yourself, while you were in a trance. You can’t deny it.’

She stubbornly shook her head. ‘What I said in a trance you may have put into my mind; and if he said that of me it is because he is a vain and boastful man. He was lying.’

I saw that I was up against it, and there was only one thing to do. I said: ‘All right; I will believe you, if you look me in the face and swear to that.’

She fell into the trap. The second she had her eyes fixed on mine I shot out my right hand, pointed my first and second fingers at them and gave the order: ‘Sleep, Deb! At once! Go to sleep this instant!’

The old formula worked like magic. There was barely a flicker of resistance before her eyes began to glaze and the heavy eyelids dropped over them.

‘Good,’ I said, after a moment. ‘Now we will start all over again. I am still not threatening you, but I order you to disclose the naked truth that lies in your sub-conscious. Were you telling the truth just now about me?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice had gone dull and toneless. ‘You never laid a finger on me.’

‘Were you Dr. Lisický’s mistress?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want details about that. I want Nurse Cardew to hear from your own lips the full particulars of your
affaire
with the Doctor, and how, having first taken, and then neglected you, he took you back again to spite Owen Gruffydd. You had better tell the whole story as you told it to me that day in the summer-house; with any additional details which may show how badly the Doctor treated you.’

It all came out in about twenty minutes’ monotonous monologue; and when she had done Sally expressed herself as entirely
satisfied that I had put no part of it into Deb’s mind; her story included things that I couldn’t have known, and it branded Helmuth as both a sadistic brute and outrageous liar.

I turned back to Deb and asked her, purely out of curiosity: ‘Why did you seek to protect the Doctor before I put you in a trance? Why didn’t you tell us the truth then?’

‘Before I left he told me that I was never to mention that I had had an affair with him to anyone. And that if I was ever asked, I was to deny it.’

‘But as you were leaving anyhow, he could no longer hold the threat of dismissal over you; so why should you take orders from him? Was it because you were afraid that he might tell Owen Gruffydd something about you that you did not want Gruffydd to know?’

‘No. It was because I should have been severely punished if he found out that I had disobeyed him.’

‘Who by?’

‘By the Party.’

I drew in my breath. ‘Do you mean then that Dr. Lisický is also a Communist, and a member of the Party?’

‘Of course, and a very high one. He is a Commissar.’

Sally and I took a swift look at one another. The reply had electrified us both. Later, I realised that I should have considered the possibility of Helmuth being a member of the Communist Party before. Deb had disclosed that Miss Smith, who ran her nursing organisation, used it as cover for a Communist centre, and Helmuth had told me himself that Miss Smith was an old friend of his—hence his pull with her to send him not only good-looking, complaisant nurses, but ones who were also ‘trustworthy’. The tie-up was pretty clear, and I ought to have spotted it. By ‘trustworthy’ it was now clear, too, that he had meant girls who were members of the Party, whom he could order around, and who would keep their mouths shut if they suspected him of the filthy game he was playing on me. What a heaven-sent blessing that Miss Smith should have gone off for the weekend and the nurse she had selected to replace Deb had injured her ankle, so that dear Sally was sent instead!

But Helmuth a Commissar! I would never have suspected that.
And what a field of speculation it opened up about the real activities of the Brotherhood!

When I had had a moment to recover from the bombshell that Deb had so unwittingly thrown, I said to her:

‘Did you ever hear anything about occult forces being used by members of the Party to gain their political ends?’

‘We are taught to use whatever means we regard as most suitable,’ she replied. ‘In some cases people who are interested in the occult can be led on through it to do things which they would not like others to know; then they can easily be blackmailed into doing as we wish.’

‘But have you ever known a member of the Party actually to practise Black Magic himself?’ I asked. ‘I mean, one who cast spells, and used incantations to call up evil entities from the other world to help him in his work?’

‘Only Dr. Lisický,’ came the toneless answer. ‘He did not tell me very much about it. But I know that the reason he would not allow your blackout curtain to be lengthened, in the room downstairs, was so that the moonlight could continue to show under it. He needed the moonlight as a path for something to come into your room.’