The Ka of Gifford Hillary

by Dennis Wheatley

  In the hall he collected my heaviest overcoat and put it on over the raincoat he was wearing. When he got back to the kitchen the kettle was boiling. After getting the coffee percolator going he hunted round till he found a couple of Thermos flasks and a basket, then got milk from the frig and a basin of jellied soup that happened to be there. Leaving the kitchen again, he fetched a bottle of whisky and a bottle of brandy, both three-parts full, from the drinks cupboard in the library. Having filled the two flasks with a mixture of coffee, brandy and milk, he put all the oddments into the basket, snatched up the bundle, and hurried back to the garage.

  He had not been away for more than a quarter of an hour and during it I had remained semi-conscious. My hand, head and throat ached savagely again, and between bouts of shivering I was seized with waves of panic; but there was light to see by and I could once more move my limbs freely; so I managed to fight them down.

  We used part of the spare garage as a store for garden cushions, collapsible chairs, and so on, during the winter, and after my body had been removed from the beach pavilion, Silvers must have collected them from it; for, as soon as Johnny had given me a few gulps from one of the flasks, he threw down alongside the car rubber lilo and proceeded to blow it up.

  With his help I managed to stagger out and tumble on to it. Stripping me of my winding sheet he poured some of the whisky on to my chest and began to rub vigorously. Ignoring my groans he pounded and kneaded the flesh of my back, thighs, arms and legs for all he was worth, using the whisky as a friction until the bottle was empty. The treatment was harsh but effective.

  By the time he had done, the rubbing with neat spirit had restored my circulation and something of my strength; so that I was able to sit up on my own and help him a little in getting me into clothes he had brought from my room.

  During the latter stages of the operation he gave me a résumé of what had happened to himself, the events which had led to his coming to my rescue, and how he had got all the things from the house without arousing Silvers’s suspicions. Finally he got me into the heavy overcoat, made a sling from a strip of the winding sheet for my injured hand, and helped me back into the car. Having put out the light, he opened the garage door and took his place beside me; then we drove off on the next stage of our extraordinary and tragic odyssey.

  He had given me one of the flasks and put the bowl of jellied soup on my knees. As he had forgotten to bring a spoon I had to scoop up the soup with a piece of cardboard torn from the cover of a motoring map, but it slid down my parched throat like nectar, and the café-cognac completed the good work Johnny’s massage had begun.

  While I fed he gave me a more detailed account of his arrest and of how he had broken prison and got me out of the grave. I told him he need worry no more about being court-martialled and that it was the Minister of Defence himself who had given me my information.

  It was this which brought into my still-far-from-orderly mind the threat to Sir Charles’s life. As yet I had not even grasped what day of the week it was, but in broken sentences I told Johnny of the danger in which his Chief stood and how urgent it was that we should get a warning to him.

  Johnny, of course, thought that the reaction to my escape had already set in and that I had become delirious. Huskily I tried to persuade him to pull up at a telephone kiosk, but he put me off with soothing phrases, and I was still in too much pain to carry on an argument about anything for long.

  On my complaining of my pain, he said: ‘Stupid of me; I should have thought of that before,’ and slowing down the car he got out the first aid kit to give me a couple of tablets. After a while they took effect, my pain eased and I fell asleep.

  I was woken by being thrown forward with a jerk. Johnny had been driving fast through still almost deserted streets, and a milk-float emerging suddenly from a side turning had necessitated his braking hard. Dawn had come, but for the moment I did not recognise the shops and houses on either side of us; so I asked him where we were. He told me that we were just coming into Fulham and we began to talk again.

  He was telling me about Daisy, and how she had refused to believe that the apparition she had seen was mine, when I told him that I had been present during his talks with her, and added that I had also listened in at his interview with Mr. Tibitts. For a moment he was astounded, but quickly admitted it was logical that my etheric double should have brought such memories back with it to my re-awakened mind. He asked me then, a little diffidently, if I knew that another coffin had been lowered on to mine.

  I relieved him from the fear of having to break the news to me about Ankaret’s death, and went on to say that during the week my Ka had been absent from my body it had been able to follow many of the doings of himself and the rest of my family.

  He asked me then what had really occurred on the night that I was supposed to have committed suicide. I replied that it was too long a story to go into at the moment, and would have to wait until I was feeling less groggy. It was not, now that Ankaret was dead, that I had any objection to telling him; but, although my mind was much clearer since my sleep, it was still to some extent confused, and coherent thought was made difficult owing to the pains that insistently racked my head.

  We had not fallen silent for long before we pulled up in Nevern Square. With Johnny’s aid I was now just strong enough to walk. Getting upstairs was a slow and laborious business, but with one of my arms round his neck I managed it, and having lowered me into an arm-chair in the sitting-room he went down again to fetch up the other things from the car.

  While he was away my thoughts again drifted to Sir Charles; so directly Johnny came back I said that we must telephone at once. He thought I meant in order to get Sir Charles to clear him of the charges made against him, and said that now I was safe there was no immediate hurry about that; the most important thing at the moment was to get me to bed.

  The time was about a quarter-past six, and I had now gathered that it was Sunday morning; so I feared that Sir Charles was already dead. But if he was and we raised the alarm at once the police might get the woman who had poisoned him before she could leave the country. I told Johnny that; and although my sentences were still laboured I could see that he was a little shaken in his belief that my concern for Sir Charles was a fantasy of my brain due to the great stress it had been under.

  After some further urging I persuaded him to ring up his office and find but Sir Charles’s telephone number in the country. Somewhat reluctantly he got on to the Ministry switchboard and obtained the number. It was some time before we could get an answer from the cottage, and the lack of it increased my fears; but at last we did and Johnny handed me the receiver.

  On my asking for Sir Charles, it was Maria who replied. From her heavy accent I had no doubt about that. She said that Sir Charles was not there. She had expected him the previous evening but he had not come down after all. It was often like that.

  Greatly relieved, I replaced the receiver. That Maria had been speaking the truth, I was convinced. If she had put poison in his dinner she would have left the cottage hours ago. For the moment, by the grace of God, he had escaped; and he had said that he had a luncheon engagement. But he might go down there that evening; so it was imperative that I should get a warning to him sometime during the day.

  This fresh effort had again brought me near exhaustion, but a long pull at the second flask of café-cognac revived me enough to help Johnny get my clothes off. When he had got me into bed, and had just put the rest of the pain-killer tablets on the table beside it, he said:

  ‘Look, Giff, I still feel that I’m in a pretty tricky spot. Say Sir Charles backs out and refuses to admit that he gave away official secrets to you. What happens then?’

  ‘He won’t,’ I replied. ‘He is not a dirty little careerist politician. I’m certain he would never allow one of his staff to be ruined to cover up something he had done himself.’

  ‘I think you’re right there,’ Johnny agreed. ‘But say there really is someth
ing in this extraordinary idea of yours, and he is murdered before he has a chance to exonerate me? Is there anyone else who could prove that it was he who gave you the gen?’

  I nodded weakly. ‘Yes. Get hold of Martin Emsworth at the Treasury. It was he who arranged my meeting with Sir Charles. We met on the evening of Wednesday the seventh at Martin’s flat. Martin will be able to substantiate that, and the fact that we met in secret is proof enough that it was Sir Charles who put me up to the line I took at the board meeting on the following Friday.’

  Johnny wrote down Emsworth’s name in his pocket diary, then he wrote something else on a loose-leaf, tore it out and laid it on the bed-side table next to the pain-killers. I had just closed my eyes, but he shook me gently and said very earnestly:

  ‘Listen, Giff. You must listen to me for a moment. This is terribly important.’

  ‘All right. Go ahead,’ I muttered, again trying to concentrate my attention.

  He spoke slowly and distinctly. ‘I hate to have to do it, but I’ve got to leave you now. It may have already been discovered that I’ve broken prison. If so there will be merry hell going on at Uxbridge. As they seem to regard me as another Maclean half the police in England will have been turned on to hunt for me, and nothing that I can do will save the poor devil who was responsible for my custody from getting a most frightful rocket. But for the past two days I have not been called till eight, and during the daytime it’s an open camp; so if I beat it back right away there is still a sporting chance that no one will ever know that I left it. I wouldn’t be able to reach my room without being spotted. But I could say that I’d slipped out for an early morning stroll while the sentry’s back was turned; and Tinegate wouldn’t be such a fool as to report that. He’s been very decent to me; so I’d like to save his bacon if I can. Understand?’

  I nodded, and he went on: ‘Now; about yourself. You are damned ill, and I ought to have sent for a doctor right away. But I didn’t because I don’t want you to talk to anyone before you are in a state to think more clearly. As far as I can judge the bones in your hand are not broken and you are in no immediate danger. If you stay put for forty-eight hours you should be sufficiently recovered to get about again.

  ‘If you do get bad pains in your chest, though, you’ll have to have a doctor; so I’ve written the name and telephone number of a local medico on that slip of paper. Should you find it imperative to call him in, your name is the same as mine and I brought you here after we had been in a car smash early this morning. Before I go I am also going to write a note for my landlady, Mrs. Burton. She won’t be up yet, so I shall leave it on the sitting-room mantel-piece. In it I shall ask her to look after you until you are fit enough to get up and leave. If you call yourself by my name it will be easy for you to remember. I shall tell Mrs. B. that you are my uncle and that I was christened after you. So for the time being, anyway, you are John Norton senior. Is that clear?’

  I looked up at him with a puzzled frown, and asked: ‘Why all this mystery, Johnny?’

  He gave a sad smile. ‘I don’t wonder that you are still a bit slow on the uptake after the ghastly time you have been through. This whole show is so utterly extraordinary that I can hardly believe it to be true myself yet. Still, we two know it is, and we have got to face facts. When you have had time to think a bit, you’ll realise that the most frightful complications are bound to arise were it known that you have come back to life again; or rather, were never really dead.

  ‘That is the reason why I want you to take a false name for the time being. It is the reason, too, why I mean to keep my mouth shut about where I went and what I did during the hours I took French leave from Uxbridge.

  ‘You have put me in the clear now. When I write and ask Sir Charles to exonerate me I can say that you told me yourself immediately after the board meeting that you had got your information from him; and that I have kept mum about that so far because I didn’t want to embarrass him and was expecting him to get me out of trouble himself as soon as he learned of my arrest. And if he fails me I’ve got your friend Emsworth to fall back on; with one or the other of them I’ll be all right; so I won’t have to drag you into it, and you don’t have to worry about me any more.

  ‘But you will have to do some hard thinking before you leave this house. You have got a suit of clothes, and I’ve put some money in the pocket of your jacket. Only about six pounds but that’s all I had on me, and it will carry you on for a bit. I dragged Ankaret’s coffin back over yours and replaced the tarpaulin, so nobody will ever know you left it. That is, unless you decide to tell them. It is our secret and you can rely on me to keep it.’

  Suddenly he leant forward and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Good-bye, Giff. The best of luck whatever happens. But to all the world you are dead. And I think the best thing you can do is to remain so.’

  14

  Sunday 18th September

  When Johnny had gone I took two of the pain-killers and soon after fell asleep. Since then I have several times been the victim of the most frightful nightmares and, believing myself back in my coffin, woken screaming. But on this occasion I was spared that. On waking, a glance at the bedside clock showed me that it was ten-past three. I had slept for over eight hours and nothing is so healing as sound sleep. My headache had gone, my neck no longer hurt, and there was only a dull ache in my hand; but my mind was far from being restored to normal.

  Had it been I might have acted differently. My health had not been seriously impaired; so if I had stayed where I was for another day or two I might have gone out into the world under another name. It would have been hard to start life again from scratch at my age, but I was strongly built and by no means lacking in intelligence. With so many good jobs going begging owing to full employment I could soon have got one without too many questions being asked; first as a casual labourer, then something better until I had saved enough to get abroad, perhaps to Germany, where shipbuilding of all kinds was booming and my experience would soon have commanded a salary large enough to keep me in comfort.

  But my brain was not normal. For seven days and nights my Ka had registered an almost continual succession of frightful doubts, acute anxieties and harrowing experiences; then for some twenty-seven hours I had lain imprisoned in my coffin. It is true that many of those hours must have been passed in spells of unconsciousness, but anyone need only imagine what it would be like to be buried alive for ten minutes to judge the mental strain I had been through.

  My mind was lucid about some things but confused about others and events during the first few days after my presumed death had been pushed into its background by more recent occurrences. The succession of tragedies at Longshot now seemed to me to have happened months ago, and no longer to be of much importance; so despite Johnny’s warning of the complications that I should be faced with if I resumed life as Sir Gifford Hillary, I hardly gave them a thought. On the other hand the problems which had confronted me when I forced my Ka back into my body were still fresh in my mind.

  That of Johnny had been dealt with, but there remained that of Sir Charles. The recollection of the whole night and day that I had spent vainly trying to get a warning to him, and the fact that it had been mainly to do so that I had gone down into my grave, now drove out all other memories. By an act of Providence he had been prevented from going down to his cottage the previous night; but he might do so that evening or, perhaps, was already on his way there. Looking at the clock again I saw that it was twenty-past three. Galvanised into action by the thought that I had not a moment to lose, I got out of bed.

  My long sleep had done me a power of good. I found that I could walk quite well without assistance; but when I went into the bathroom I received a terrible shock. As I saw my face in the mirror I did not recognise myself. That I had eight days’ stubble on my chin was no surprise, but it was white. So was my hair—snow white; and my eyes were sunk back in my head, making me look like a corpse.

  When I recovered a little from the shock I
did my best to freshen up and tidy myself. As every minute counted I had to deny myself a bath, and my injured right hand put shaving out of the question; but with my left I splashed some cold water over my face and combed back my hair. Getting into my clothes was far from easy and with movement my hand again began to hurt. I could not get a collar or tie on, and had to leave the laces of my shoes undone; but by twenty to four I was on my way downstairs.

  Out in the square I was lucky enough to pick up a cruising taxi. Its driver gave me an astonished look, and probably thought that I had escaped from an asylum; but as I stumbled in I shouted at him:

  ‘Storey’s Gate! Ministry of Defence! Quick! Double fare if you can get me there in fifteen minutes!’

  From long habit he let in his clutch without argument.

  As it was Sunday afternoon, he made it. I paid him off out of Johnny’s money, and heard Big Ben chime four as I entered the building.

  In the hall I was received by an elderly bald man wearing the blue serge uniform with gold crowns on its lapels of a Whitehall messenger. His pale blue eyes popped as they took me in, but before he could utter a word, I cried:

  ‘I must see the Minister; and at once. It’s very urgent.’

  ‘Have you … have you an appointment?’ he stammered.

  ‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘But that doesn’t matter. Is he here, or has he left for the country?’

  The messenger cast a worried look towards a policeman who had been standing at the far end of the hall, but now approached with slow majestic tread, eyeing me dubiously.

  ‘Come on!’ I insisted. ‘Is Sir Charles here or not?’