The Haunting of Toby Jugg (43 page)

I looked at Sally again, and I knew that as far as she was concerned I now had Helmuth completely in the bag.

Under hypnotic influence Deb had done her stuff, and more; so I woke her and reassured her that I would say nothing to Owen Gruffydd. Then Sally took her downstairs and got rid of her.

When Sally came back she could not have been more generous about not having believed me before; and for a little time I allowed myself the luxury of basking in her sweet sympathy about this ghastly time I have been through. But there is only tonight before Helmuth gets back, so we soon got down to brass tacks and started planning our get-away.

She was all against my idea for getting the wheel-chair down the staircase, as she said it would be much too great a strain and might do me serious injury, even if I didn’t collapse before we reached the bottom. But after a bit she thought of a better idea.

The far end of the battlement along the terrace is in partial ruin already, and the rest of the stones can easily be pushed over. It is
only a fifteen-foot drop to the grass verge beneath, which is about two yards wide, having the chapel on one side of it and the edge of the lake on the other. With a twenty-five-foot rope, or even that length of stout knotted cord, we could take a hitch round the nearest sound castellation of the battlement and lower the chair to the ground.

Fortunately Sally is very strong for a girl, so she is going to take me down the stairs in a semi-piggyback. I’ll have my arms round her neck, and my feet dragging, but each time she takes a step down, I’ll be able to take my own weight off her for a moment.

There is a side door just down a passage from the bottom of the stairs and we shall go out through that. She will be able to get me along the passage, and round the outside of the Castle to my chair, in the same way as we mean to go down the stairs. We tried it out this afternoon, and found that I could get across the room quite easily that way.

She has gone down to the village again to buy the length of stout cord, and also to order a car to meet us at the bridge at the lake end, at midnight; so she won’t have far to wheel me.

I think I can hear her coming up the stairs now; so she has lost no time on the job. What a blessed, merciful relief all this is.

Friday, 19th June

Those footsteps coming up the stairs were Helmuth’s. As the door opened and I saw him the thought leapt to my mind that he must be the Fiend in person. Or, at least, that only by Satanic means could he possibly have learned of our plan to escape, and have returned eighteen hours before he was due back in order to prevent it.

Then, thunderstruck as I was by his unexpected appearance, common sense told me that, barely two hours having elapsed since Sally had agreed to help me, he could not have known of it earlier, even by a thought wave; and, if he had stuck to his schedule he would then have been in the train coming south from Carlisle. In so brief a time nothing short of a magic carpet could have whisked him from a station
en route,
back to Llanferdrack;
and I put that beyond what even the Devil could do for his agents in full daylight.

I was right about that, but nevertheless it transpired that his psychic powers had hastened his return. For a moment he stood in the doorway, looking at me searchingly and almost seeming to sniff the atmosphere. Then he said abruptly:

‘Well? Have you made your choice?’

Consternation, anger, hatred and fear all struggled for first place in my emotions following the shock; but, by a miracle, I managed to retain enough of my wits to realise that now Sally was on my side all was not entirely lost, and that my one hope was to play for time. So I shook my head.

‘No. I’ve been giving my mind a holiday. The events of the week before you left put such a strain on it that I found I couldn’t think coherently; so I decided not even to try to face the question till a few hours before you got back. And you said you wouldn’t be back till after lunch tomorrow.’

‘I know,’ he said; ‘but last night I felt an impulse to—er—as you would put it—consult the oracle. The stars were by no means propitious, so the portents proved unusually obscure. That does happen occasionally, even to the most gifted practitioner of the art. However, on one point I received guidance. It was to the effect that my plans might be endangered if I failed to keep you under my personal observation; so I caught the first train south this morning and hired a car to bring me from Birmingham.’

With a shrug of my shoulders I pretended an unconcern that I was far from feeling, and muttered: ‘So long as I am kept in this glorified cell with Nurse Cardew and Konrad to act as my gaolers I shouldn’t have thought you had much cause to worry.’

‘In any case, I haven’t now that I am back,’ he replied. ‘And now that your mind is rested you had better do a little serious thinking.’

That admonition ended his brief visit, and I was left to savour the gall and wormwood of my most promising attempt to escape having been nipped in the bud.

I was almost weeping with vexation, but my futile mental rebellion against this unforeseen blasting of my hopes was soon submerged by a specific anxiety arising out of the new situation.
The question that made me sweat blood was—would Helmuth run into Sally on her return and find out that she had gone over to me in his absence? If he did he would sack her instantly, and I should never see her again. The thought was torture.

Half-an-hour after he had left me, that immediate anxiety was relieved by her reappearance. She was flushed with excitement, laughing, a little breathless, and carrying under her arm a brown-paper parcel containing the length of stout cord for lowering the chair. She had not seen Helmuth.

In a few words I told her what had happened. For a bit she was terribly upset—not frightened, but angry and disappointed. Then we discussed the possibility of carrying through our plans, but agreed that Helmuth having returned in such a suspicious mood our chances would be far better if we postponed our attempt for twenty-four hours, anyway.

Before we had time to go into matters further Konrad came in with my dinner, and Sally had to go downstairs to have hers.

While I ate I was again the prey of harrowing speculations. It suddenly struck me that Helmuth was almost certain to learn of Deb’s visit. If he tackled me about it, what explanation could I invent that would not involve Sally? And when he tackled her was there one chance in a hundred that her explanation would tally with mine? That passage in our activities was obviously dynamite.

Later, Sally told me that she had been equally perturbed on the same point; but she did not dare to come up to me again till half-past-nine, in case Helmuth should suspect that we had been getting together while he was away. She had seen him and reported my attempt to bribe her. That was clever of her, and had gone with a swing, as few things could have been better calculated to convince Helmuth that she still regarded him as her boss and was capable of resisting all attempts to undermine her loyalty to him.

Fortunately he still seemed to know nothing of Deb’s visit, as he had not alluded to it. We discussed that, and decided that if he asked Sally about it, she should say she had met Deb on the bridge on her way up here; that Deb had introduced herself, spoken of her forthcoming marriage, and—as one nurse to
another—disclosed the fact that she simply did not know which way to turn to raise the money for her trousseau; and had had the idea of appealing to me either to give or lend her a hundred pounds as compensation for having been the cause of her losing her job. Upon which Sally agreed to let her see me and brought her up here; but what happened at the interview she does not know.

We were rather pleased with the story we concocted, as it covered Sally’s having brought Deb to the house, and is really very plausible, since nurses are notoriously ill-paid and Deb, having no family to help her, may well be up against it for cash to buy nice clothes for her wedding.

Sally and I had only just agreed on the above when Konrad came in, and, after the usual drill, they both left me for the night.

I feel terribly tired, as Helmuth’s return having baulked me when I was within an ace of getting free had exasperated me almost beyond endurance; and, added to that, I had gone through some four hours of nerve-racking fear that he might find out about Sally’s change of attitude and sack her. But that danger seemed over for the moment if we both kept our heads, and it was up to me to make yet another plan; so I endeavoured to shake off my mental fatigue and get to grips with the problem anew.

The results of my effort were lamentably poor. Helmuth had clearly been in a highly suspicious mood on his return, but having found everything as he had left it, and particularly Sally having told him of my attempt to bribe her, must have done a lot to reassure him. So the best I could hope for was that if nothing occurred to cause him to take special precautions, we might have a decent chance of making our escape tonight.

The devil of it is that he will come up this afternoon, or evening, for his answer. I am determined not to give in, but if I defy him there is the dreadful possibility that he may carry out his threat to employ the Great Spider.

God knows how I will ever bring myself to face that fearful Satanic beast, and the touch of it may well drive me insane. But Helmuth must know that, and such a possibility seems to be the only card that I have left. If he
does
drive me insane he will have burnt his boats as far as the short, easy way of getting control of
the Jugg millions is concerned. He will get hold of them in the long run, but that will take a considerable time, and an immense amount of skilful intrigue would be required before he could oust the Trustees that might oppose his plans, and achieve absolute control of the Board. Whereas if he can get me to sign a power of attorney he will have achieved complete victory by a single stroke of the pen. So I must play on that. The Sabbath, at which I take it the Brotherhood mean to celebrate a full-scale Black Mass in the chapel here, is not to take place until Tuesday—five nights hence—so I must temporise to the utmost of my ability in the hope of winning another two or three days’ grace.

If only I can get him to postpone extreme measures until Sunday or Monday, Sally may be able to get me away before then. But there is no guarantee that he will not issue an ultimatum to me this evening; and as I lay in the dark last night, realising that in another twenty-four hours I might have to face the Great Spider, the thought alone was enough to make me sweat with terror.

It was casting frantically about in my mind for a means to defend myself that made me think of Great-aunt Sarah. What effect, if any, a bullet would have on a supernatural beast I have no idea, but I do know that I would feel considerably more courageous with a firearm in my hand if I am called on to face it.

I doubt if there is a pistol in the Castle, unless Helmuth keeps one somewhere, and, even if he does, it would be impossible to get hold of that; but there must be several shot-guns and ammunition in the gun-room, and it occurred to me that I might get Great-aunt Sarah to bring me one tonight.

In consequence, when I heard her going down the staircase in the wall behind my bed, I rapped on the panel and called her in. After making polite enquiries about the progress of her tunnel, I told her what I wanted her to do for me, and thank God, without even asking me what I meant to do with a gun up here, she readily agreed to my request.

This is a great comfort, as if I don’t need the gun tonight I can hide it behind the back of my bed; then I’ll have it handy and, in the last event, I’ll be able to fill Helmuth full of lead.

Later

It rained this morning, so Sally and I were not able to go out on to our terrace as usual; but we had a long talk here in my room. I gave her a full account of Helmuth’s conversations with me during the few days before he went away—as I did not let her have the latter pages of my journal when she read the rest of it, because they contained several passages referring to my love for her—so she is now up to date with the whole situation and, thank goodness, she no longer doubts any part of what I told her.

She was, once more, sweetly sympathetic about the hell I have been through, and when I had finished, she said:

‘You must have done something pretty frightful in one of your previous lives to be landed with a packet like this; but at least you have the consolation of knowing that you are paying it off, and that whatever happens now you will go forward with a much cleaner start in the future.’

I looked at her in surprise. ‘Do you honestly believe that this is what the Hindus call Karma; and that there really is something in Reincarnation?’

‘Why not?’ she smiled. ‘It is the only creed which provides a logical explanation to any and every human experience; that is, if you believe that the power which created the world, and us, is both intelligent and just—and if you don’t believe that, then the whole scheme of things does not make sense.’s I smiled. ‘But does the punishment always fit the crime?’

‘Always. It is never a fraction more or less than you deserve.’

‘How about my back; what do you think I did to deserve that?’

‘It may be that you were due to learn patience as a cripple; or simply that the Nazi was paying off an old score, because long ago you had broken his back with a battleaxe, or something.’

‘Then will I have to break his again in some future life, to punish him in his turn? It seems a stupid game to go on playing tit for tat like that through all eternity.’

‘Oh no. You will be given the chance; and if you care to take it you will be in the clear, as you are entitled to give back what you get. But not a fraction more, mind. And if you are wise you will refrain from taking your revenge. It is by suppressing one’s anger, and turning the other cheek, that one achieves spiritual progress.’

‘If I did that he would get off.’

Sally shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t. If you denied yourself the temporary gratification of sloshing him, he would still have to pay up for having sloshed you; but it would be through some other agency. He might have his back broken in a mine disaster, or by some scaffolding falling on him while he was walking down a street. If you
did
break his back first you are now even, on the old eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth principle, so he has nothing to worry about; but if this was the first round between you he has got it coming to him in some form or another.’