The Haunting of Toby Jugg

by Dennis Wheatley

  On the other side of the picture the moon will be full again on Saturday the 30th; but my danger period starts well before that. Last time the attacks occurred nightly from the 30th April to the 4th of May, with a blank only on the 2nd, when the moon was actually full; but that was because it was a night of heavy cloud and the moon never came through. So, judging by the previous bout, I’ll be in danger from Thursday night on. But if the nights remain clear the attacks may start before that—perhaps on Wednesday, or even tonight.

  I ought to have worked all this out before, or anyway yesterday when I was so cock-a-hoop at having got my letter off to Uncle Paul. Then, I more or less counted on his jumping into a train on Wednesday; or, anyhow, getting here on Thursday. But I feel sure now that there must be some subtle influence at work which has obscured my judgment in such matters and made me over-sanguine about the success of my plans.

  My fright last night has entirely dissipated the feeling of temporary security that seems to have accumulated like fleecy clouds of cotton wool round my brain. I realise now that it would be crazy to count on Uncle Paul turning up before the trouble starts again. He may or he may not; but I am not going to stay and chance it. I am going to get out tonight, or at least have a damn’ good try.

  If I can hypnotise Deb to a degree at which she will post a letter for me and remember nothing about it afterwards, and send her into a trance deep enough for her to reveal her dirty little schemes against poor old Britain, I see no reason why I should not make her come and fetch me in my chair in the middle of the night and wheel me out of the house.

  Once outside, Comrade Kain can damn’ well keep on wheeling me along the King’s highway; and if round about dawn she drops with fatigue it won’t cause me any pain and grief at all. In fact I rather like the idea that this earnest little disciple of Papa Marx and Uncle Lenin should have to go to bed for a week, to recover from the effort of saving Flight-Lieutenant Sir Toby Jugg, D.F.C., R.A.F.V.R., from the Devil.

  Later

  This journal has been a good friend to me. When I made the first entries in an old exercise book my nerves were stretched to breaking-point, and forcing myself to make a logical analysis of my thoughts did a lot to keep me sane. Since then, writing it, besides providing what may yet prove a valuable record of events here, has whiled away many an hour of my dreary invalid existence. But I hope that this will be my last entry in it.

  All is set fair for tonight. Deb has her ‘Sealed Orders’ (not to be opened until 0045 hours 27.5.42). That is actually what it comes to, as my instructions, verbally issued this afternoon, are sealed up in her sub-conscious, which will not release them to her conscious mind until a quarter to one in the morning.

  Even Helmuth keeps fairly early hours here in the country. He usually goes up to bed about eleven o’clock, so by one I can count on the coast being clear. As Deb will have to get up and dress it is unlikely that she will come for me till a bit after one, and it will take another twenty minutes or so for her to get me dressed. Usually Taffy does that, but with my help Deb will manage somehow. Although I cannot stand, even for a moment, the strength of my arms is fortunately so great that I can support my dead weight by clinging to one of the posts of this big four-poster bed, and if Deb holds my chair steady I’ll be able to heave myself off the bed into it. So I plan to make my break-out about half-past one in the morning, which should give me six-and-a-half hours clear before my escape is discovered.

  With my fright last night still vivid in my mind, it occurred to me that I would ordinarily have to lie here in the dark between ten o’clock and one, and that if there was a moon again the Thing might seize this last chance to attack me; so I put my blessed gift to good use again when Deb came in to settle me down. Having completed the usual ritual, she was just about to pick up my Aladdin lamp and carry it off with her, but I caught her eye, put her under, and said:

  ‘Leave the lamp where it is, Deb. You may go now, and you will not wake until you have turned the angle of the corridor. When you wake you will have forgotten that you have left the lamp burning here.’

  As she reached the door I called her back, on the sudden thought that it might be as well to do a final check-up. I made her repeat the instructions about tonight and she had the whole thing clear; so it is now only a matter of killing time until one o’clock.

  That is why I am making this final entry. I am in much more of a flap than I ever was before going out on an operational sortie, and this is the best means I can think of to occupy my mind. My idea of making her leave the lamp is therefore now proving a double blessing, as I have never before been able to read or write after ten o’clock.

  After Deb had gone I said prayers for the success of my venture, but one can’t keep on praying for very long; at least, I can’t, as I find that I start to repeat myself, which begins to make it monotonous and seems rather pointless. However, I had a new line tonight, in additional supplications that all should go well with my escape.

  It suddenly struck me that it was soon after I first started to pray that I remembered Squadron-Leader Cooper telling me that I had hypnotic eyes; and it was that which led to my present prospect of getting the better of Helmuth. I think now that memory must have come to me as a direct answer to prayer, and that, seeing my utter helplessness, God has granted me the swift development of this strange power for my defence against the machinations of the Devil.

  It is certainly little short of miraculous that within a few days I should have acquired such an ascendancy over Deb as to make her reveal to me her most jealously guarded secrets. She has never disguised the fact that her sympathies are with the Left, but that is a very different matter from admitting that she is a Communist agent actively working against Britain.

  The idea that a foreigner like Deb is eligible to become a Member of Parliament, and actually laying long-term plans to do so, positively horrifies me. Can we do nothing to prevent such a monstrous perversion in the representation of the British people? Is Party backing, superficial intelligence and a glib tongue really all that is required, irrespective of race or creed, to gain a place in that august assembly where Walpole and Chatham, the younger Pitt, Wellington, Joe Chamberlain, and now Churchill have thundered forth the tale of Britain’s defiance, courage and integrity?

  I suppose it is. If Deb’s husband was already a Labour member, and the people who run the Labour Party Office were unaware that she was secretly a Communist, they might well agree to her nomination as a Labour candidate.

  Gruffydd won’t stand much chance of getting in if the country sends back the Conservatives at the next election with a large majority; but it would not surprise me at all if, after the war, there is a big landslide towards Labour. In any case, now that Liberal representation is so small, Labour is H.M.’s Opposition, and the swing of the pendulum is bound to bring them in within the next ten years; so Deb might easily get a seat by the time she is forty-five. And by then how many other Communists will there be who have infiltrated into the House on a Labour ticket?

  What is the answer to that sort of thing? One cannot prevent British Communists from using the Labour Party as a stalking-horse, and we don’t want to close the doors against foreigners settling here. Neither, shades of Disraeli, do we want to discriminate against our own Jews. Incidentally, his family had been resident in London for nearly a hundred years before he first went to sit at Westminster. But the laws governing the qualifications for election to Parliament were made in a different age, and I think they need bringing up to date. At least we could check this infiltration of foreigners into the House by passing a law that no man or woman whose parents were not British born should be eligible to become an M.P. And—perhaps even more important—to prevent their being appointed to high executive posts under the Government, make a minimum residence of twenty-five years in Great Britain an essential requirement to secure nationalisation.

  Is that reactionary? I don’t think so. ‘Reactionary’ is just the parrot-cry howled at anyone these
days who has the courage to think and act as did our forefathers who made the Empire.

  Of course, if such a law was passed the joke would be on me, because my mother was born an American, so I should not be eligible for Parliament myself. But I would willingly surrender my present right to stand if it helped to ensure that Britain should continue to be ruled by the British.

  Thank God it is just on one o’clock. Letting off all this hot air has filled in the time nicely. Deb should be here any minute now.

  Later

  It is two o’clock and Deb has not come. What the hell can have gone wrong? Perhaps an order given to subjects under hypnosis is not enough to rouse them from a natural sleep. I ought to have thought of that and ordered her to remain awake. She may come yet, but I doubt it. Anyhow, thank God I’ve got the lamp. I’ve turned it down a bit to economise the oil, so with luck it should last me till the moon has set.

  Wednesday, 27th May

  Deb never turned up, and there was a bit of a contretemps this morning. When she came into my room she was naturally not in a trance state and she saw the lamp still on my bedside table. I imagine Helmuth must have more or less threatened to flay her alive if he ever found out that she had failed to remove it, as she went into a frightful flap.

  I managed to laugh the matter off and she thinks that she forgot it through a normal lapse of memory; but she remarked rather sinisterly: ‘I can’t think what came over me last night.’

  Later, in the garden, I put her under, and got the low-down on why she had failed to carry out my orders.

  It appears that after she had tucked me up she decided that the time had come for her to have a show-down with Helmuth, so she went along to his study. With the idea of making him jealous she told him that she didn’t care for him any more and was going to get engaged to Owen Gruffydd.

  Helmuth’s reaction to that was just what I could have told her it would be. After half-an-hour’s talk over a couple of glasses of port he took her along to her room and seduced her afresh. She, poor mutt, imagines that she has pulled off her big trick and won him back to her because he could not bear the thought of losing her to another man. But I’d bet my bottom dollar that the real set-up is that Helmuth does not really give a damn for her; it simply provided him with a little cynical amusement, and flattered his sense of power, to dispose of Gruffydd with a snap of his fingers, and make her his mistress again in spite of the fact that she had told him that she now loved someone else.

  It would be interesting to see what happens during the next few weeks, if I were going to remain here—but I hope to Heaven that I’m not. My forecast would be that Helmuth would derive a lot of fun from proceeding to neglect her again until she went back to Gruffydd; perhaps he would even let her get engaged, then he would seduce her once more, and so on, until the wretched woman became half crazy with misery and despair. As it is I hope to make my exit tonight, and so break up the whole party.

  To continue about last night. At a quarter to one Deb’s mind clicked over and she suddenly realised that she had to come and get me out of the house, so she got out of bed and started to dress. Unfortunately Helmuth was still there, and at first he could not make out what the devil had got into her, as she flatly refused either to answer his questions or obey him when he told her to come back to bed, but simply went on dressing without uttering a word. Then he jumped to the conclusion that she must have dropped off to sleep and was sleep-walking.

  As far as I can make out, he took her by the shoulders, imposed his will upon her and, his hypnotic powers being stronger than mine, woke her up. Luckily for me she accepted the explanation that she had been sleep-walking, although she has never known herself do such a thing before, and immediately he brought her out of her trance she naturally lost all memory of the orders I had given her. So things might have turned out worse, as it seems that neither of them suspect the real reason for her apparently strange behaviour.

  Unless I am entirely wrong in my assessment of Helmuth’s psychology, I don’t think that he will spend the night with her again until he can get a fresh kick out of once more believing himself to have brought her to heel against her will. I don’t think, either, that she is such a fool as to betray her own weakness by asking him to do so as early as tonight, and, even if she does, I can see him beginning the process of twisting her tail by making some excuse to refuse her.

  So I think the odds are all against my being held up by the same sort of hitch two nights running.

  Thursday, 28th May

  A bitter disappointment. Everything went according to plan. Deb arrived and got me dressed. With her help I struggled into my chair. She wheeled me down the passage and across the hall to the front door; then she left me sitting there for a moment while she went forward to unlock it. As the door swung open Helmuth’s voice came from the stairs behind me:

  ‘Good evening, Toby. Or should I say good morning?’

  My heart missed a beat. There came the sound of his footfalls on the parquet, and he went on in a sneering tone:

  ‘You must love the moon a great deal not to be able to resist the temptation of going out into the garden to see her. But it is not good for you to be up at this time of night. Perhaps, though, I can arrange to have your blackout curtain shortened, so that you can see a little more moonlight from your bed.’

  There was nothing to say. I sat there dumb with misery; but the threat made me break out in a slight sweat.

  Meanwhile, Deb had propped open the front door and turned back towards me. It was clear from her wide eyes and blank expression that she had neither seen nor heard Helmuth, and she stepped up to my chair with the obvious intention of wheeling me out of the house.

  He was beside me by that time, and I saw that his eyes were cold with fury. Suddenly he raised his open hand and struck her with it hard across the face.

  ‘Stop that!’ I yelled. ‘The shock may kill her! She’s in a trance!’

  Deb gave a whimpering cry; her eyes seemed to start from her head and she staggered back. For a moment she stood with one hand on her heart, gasping and swaying drunkenly, then she sagged at the knees and fell full length on the floor.

  Ignoring her, Helmuth swung on me. ‘So that’s the game you’ve been playing, you young fiend!’

  ‘Never mind me!’ I snapped. ‘You look after your girl-friend, or you’ll have a corpse on your hands.’

  He continued to mouth at me furiously. ‘I suspected as much last night; but I simply could not believe it. Who the hell taught you how to hypnotise people?’

  ‘Is it likely that I’d tell you?’

  ‘I will make you!’ He grabbed my shoulder and began to shake me.

  But in that he made a stupid blunder. I am much stronger in the arms than he is. I grabbed his wrist, pulled it down against my stomach and twisted, at the same time throwing my weight forward on to it. He was jerked round and forced right over sideways. His mouth fell open and there was a gleam of fear in his tawny eyes as I said:

  ‘I’ll tell you nothing.’ Then I flung him from me, adding: ‘Now for God’s sake, try to revive that woman.’

  Almost snarling with rage, he turned, grasped Deb under the armpits, heaved her into a nearby chair, and forced her head down between her knees. After a minute or so she began to groan. Then she gave a shudder, looked up at us, and muttered with a puzzled frown: ‘Was machen wirhier?’

  ‘You little fool!’ Helmuth rasped at her in German. ‘You allowed him to hypnotise you; and with your help he nearly got away. Get along to your room. I’ll come and talk to you presently.’

  Deb stared at me, her black eyes distended with surprise and anger. She was about to say something, but Helmuth cut her short. Grabbing her by the arm, he pulled her to her feet and gave her a swift push in the direction of our corridor. Suddenly bursting into a passion of tears, she staggered away across the hall.

  He waited until she had disappeared, then slammed the front door and turned on me. ‘Now, Toby; I’ve had enough of yo
ur nonsense for one night. I’m going to wheel you back to your room and put you to bed.’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ I said, as a vision of the Horror doing its devil-dance on the band of moonlight flashed into my mind. ‘I prefer to spend the night here.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ he replied, and I felt my will weaken as his glance held mine.

  With an effort I pulled my eyes away from his, concentrated on looking at my own knees and muttered: ‘I’m damn’ well going to. If you lay a hand on me I swear I’ll strangle you.’

  The threat gave him pause. For over a minute there continued an absolute and highly pregnant silence, while our wills fought without our glances meeting. Then he broke off the engagement, turned abruptly, and marched angrily away from me.

  As the sound of his footsteps receded I sighed with relief. I thought I had won that round, and that he had gone off to blackguard the wretched Deb. But he hadn’t. He had gone to rouse Konrad, his Ruthenian manservant.

  Bitter disappointment at my failure to escape, and excitement over my scene with Helmuth, did not make me feel a bit like sleep at the moment. But he had left all the lights on in the hall, and twenty minutes or so after he had taken himself off I was vaguely wondering if I would be able to get any sleep at all in their glare, when I heard footsteps returning.

  Evidently Helmuth had given his man instructions beforehand; neither of them said a word, and they ran at me simultaneously. The attack came from my immediate rear, so I could make no preparations to meet it. They seized the chair rail behind my shoulders, swung me round, and rushed me across the hall. I tried to grab, first a table, next a door-knob, then some window curtains. But they were too quick for me. Before I could get a firm grasp on anything they had raced me down the corridor back to my room.

  There, a prolonged scuffle took place, while I hampered their efforts to undress me by every means in my power. But the two of them, together, were able to break every hold that I could get on them or my clothes, and at last they succeeded in getting me into bed. By then all three of us were scratched, bruised, weary and breathless with cursing. Still panting from his exertions, Helmuth picked up the lamp and, without another word, they left me.