In spite of the cold the sweat was pouring off me. I knew that in another moment this awful creature—a devil out of hell in the form of a gargantuan insect—would be upon me. But Sally’s assurance, that none of us are ever given a trial to bear that is beyond our capabilities, came back to me, and strengthened my determination to fight the brute to the last gasp.
Something outside myself suddenly warned me that the monster was just about to spring. With all my force I hurled the cigarette box at it.
The box caught it full and square on the body, just below its slavering mouth. Even in that moment of terror I found myself observing the curious effect of my missile with surprise and interest. It did not go through the brute, as it would have through a spectre; nor did it land with a bump and then fall to the floor, as it would have on striking a flesh-and-blood animal. It seemed to sink right into the furry mass just as though I had thrown it at a great lump of dough. And the impact had some effect, as the beast wobbled uncertainly on its spindly legs, then backed a couple of paces.
I had no other missile in reach that was heavy enough to be of any value; so, gasping out a prayer for help, I transferred the bottle to my right hand and grasped it firmly by the neck.
It took me only a few seconds to do so, and in that time the monster had recovered. It sidled forward again to its previous position and gathered itself to spring. At that instant my prayer was answered.
I heard the staircase door open. There came the rush of flying feet, and I saw Sally race past the end of my bed. Without a tremor of hesitation she flung herself against the terrace door and slammed it to.
The beast had been half in, half out, of the open doorway. The impact threw it back on to the terrace, but the door closed so swiftly that it caught and cut off the lower part of one of the brute’s legs. Sally, her eyes distended from the awful thing she had seen, and her breath coming quickly after her valiant effort, had turned, and was standing with her back against the door staring at me.
By her feet I could see the severed leg. It seemed to have a vile life of its own, and was wriggling like a snake; but I had seen too much during the past quarter-of-an-hour to feel any surprise when it flattened itself into a ribbon and slid under the door to rejoin its monstrous owner on the terrace.
For what seemed a long time Sally and I said nothing. Both of us were rendered speechless from horror of the Thing we had just seen, and fear that it would yet manage to get at us. It must have been a good two minutes before we recovered sufficiently to feel that the stout oak door was really a strong enough barrier to keep it out.
At last Sally whispered: ‘Are—are you all right?’
‘Yes!’ I gulped. ‘But you? Oh, Sally, I love you so much! I’ve been in agony about you for the past twenty-four hours.’
She left the door and, coming over, stood beside my bed. ‘Do you really mean that?’ she asked slowly.
I nodded. ‘Yes. I didn’t mean to tell you that I loved you. It just slipped out in the stress of the moment. But I do—terribly. You won’t mind my loving you, will you? I promise faithfully that I won’t make a nuisance of myself.’
‘No,’ she said, and her voice seemed rather flat. ‘I’m sure you won’t make a nuisance of yourself; and I won’t mind your loving me—not a bit.’
She was standing with her back to the moonlight, so her face was in shadow; but she turned it a little away from me, and then I saw that she was crying. The light glinted on a large tear running down her cheek.
‘Sally!’ I exclaimed. And I reached out and took her hand. As I did so, she openly burst into tears, crumpled up, and practically fell into my arms.
For a moment I thought that she was still frightfully overwrought from the sight of that fearsome beast; but as she clung to me she laughed a little hysterically between her sobs, and murmured:
‘I won’t mind your loving me! How could I mind? Oh, Toby! Haven’t you guessed that I—I’m terribly in love with you?’
Over her shoulder I had been keeping an anxious eye on the door, but it was fast shut and no sound came from beyond it; so at those marvellous words of hers I ceased to think of the terrors outside, and our mouths met in a succession of long, sweet kisses.
A little later she told me she had believed that I thought her both plain and stupid; to which I was able to reply truthfully that her dear face aroused a tenderness in me that I had never felt for any other woman, and that I knew her to have more real wisdom than any woman or man that I had ever met.
She still seemed to think it astonishing that I should have fallen in love with her, but I said that the boot was on the other foot; and that, anyhow, it was the most rotten luck on her to have developed those sort of feelings for a cripple.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘There is nothing wrong with you apart from the fact that you can’t walk, and that does not make the slightest difference to your personality.’
‘Perhaps not,’ I said a little sadly. ‘And I’m immensely grateful for this present blessing of your love; but I won’t be able to keep it, because I can’t ask you to marry me.’
She turned her head and peered at me in the moonlight. ‘Does that mean that you are secretly married already and have a wife hidden away somewhere?’
‘Good lord, no!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I couldn’t ask a girl like you to tie yourself to a cripple for life. It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Would you’—she squeezed my hand hard—‘would you, Toby, if you were strong and well?’
I smiled up at her. ‘Of course I would. I’ve had quite a number of affairs, but I’ve never before met a girl that I really loved. You’ve read my journal, so you know that’s true. And now I have, it’s only natural that I should want her to be mine for keeps.’
She nodded; then, after a moment, she said: ‘I shouldn’t have asked that. It was my beastly vanity that urged me to. Please try to forget it. I feel awfully touched and honoured by what you said, and I’d like you to know that your being a cripple has nothing whatever to do with it. I would marry you tomorrow if it were only that; but well or ill, if you did ask me, I’m afraid I would have to say no.’
‘Why?’ I asked a trifle belligerently; then I added with an attempt at lightness that I did not feel: ‘Perhaps you’ve got a husband tucked away somewhere?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that you are far too rich.’
‘Too rich!’ I echoed. ‘What on earth has that to do with it?’
‘A lot,’ she replied seriously. ‘When I do marry I want it to be someone who will really stick to me. I don’t mean that I’d never forgive a slip-up; in fact, human frailty being what it is, I might need forgiveness myself some time—and if I did, I’d expect to get it.
‘But I do feel that marriage should be something much more than two people agreeing to legalise a yen for one another, and after living together for a few years accepting it as quite natural that they should take another dip in the lucky tub.’
Then I said:
‘As I am still a cripple, and likely to remain one for a long time to come, the question does not arise. But if I were fit I’d never rest until I had persuaded you to think differently, as far as I am concerned.’ I kissed her again and made a joke of it. ‘Anyhow, if I do get well, there is always one way of getting over your objection. I can make all my money over to Helmuth; then we’ll take a ten-bob-a-week cottage, where you can scrub the floors and do all the cooking.’
All this time she had been lying beside me on the bed, with her head pillowed on my shoulder. At my mention of Helmuth she broke from my embrace and sat up with a jerk, exclaiming:
‘He mustn’t find me here! I waited to come to you till I thought he was safely in bed; but as he sent that awful thing tonight he’s certain to come up to find out what effect it had on you.’
As he had done so after he sent the legion of small spiders I thought the odds were on her being right, but I said quickly: ‘Don’t worry, sweet. If he does, you can hide while he is here.’
‘Where?’ she asked, with an anxious glance round.
‘Behind the secret panel that gives on to Great-aunt Sarah’s staircase,’ I replied, pointing it out to her. ‘But there’s another thing. He left the terrace door open slightly, and if he comes up he must find it like that, or open; otherwise, as I couldn’t possibly have shut it myself, he’ll know that I must have had a human visitor.’
She shuddered. ‘I daren’t open it again. That—that awful creature may still be out there.’
For the past twenty minutes my every thought had been of Sally, so I had not been conscious of the change in the atmosphere; but now I realised that, although the moonlight still shone brightly through the grille, the air was no longer foul with that awful stench and was once again warm with the balminess of the summer night; so I said:
‘The brute has gone. I’m sure of that. It seems extraordinary that simply slamming a door on a powerful Satanic entity should have been enough to drive it off altogether. I should have thought it would have had another go at trying to get through the grating, but your presence seems to have worked a miracle.’
She shook her head. ‘If it has gone, it wasn’t anything that I did. It was us. The saying “God is Love” is true, you know. And the spiritual something we released when we discovered that we loved one another must have been terrific. It probably had the same effect on the Horror as its shadow used to have on you; and I wouldn’t be surprised if it crept away somewhere to be sick in a corner.’
As far as the beast was concerned her theory sounded highly plausible, but we did not feel that we could count on it also applying to Helmuth; and if she opened the door and left me there was a chance both that it might return, and that she might run into him on her way downstairs. We decided that she had better remain and we would keep our ears open for sounds of his approach. Then, if he did come up, she could quickly open the terrace door, and get into hiding behind the panel, before he entered the room.
So that no time should be lost I suggested that she should get the panel open. She slid off the bed and, as she stepped forward, gave an ‘Ouch!’ of pain.
‘What is it, darling?’ I asked anxiously.
‘My ankle,’ she explained. ‘I sprained it last night. That is why I wasn’t able to come up to you all day.’
‘So Helmuth wasn’t lying about that,’ I murmured. ‘Last night I was half crazy with worry about you. How did you manage with him?’
She laughed, a little ruefully. ‘I overplayed my hand and this is the result. Before dinner I thought out what I meant to do. If a girl has just ricked her ankle badly and is in considerable pain it is just as much out of the question to make love to her satisfactorily as if she is disgustingly drunk. He was as charming and interesting as ever over dinner, and I’m sure he thought that he had really got me going.
‘Afterwards we went upstairs to look at his books. That main staircase is so highly polished that it is rather a death-trap anyway. Halfway up I supped on purpose, pretended to clutch at him, missed and went tumbling down to the bottom. Unfortunately I was wearing high heels, the right one turned over and gave me an awful twinge. It wasn’t a case of shamming any longer, and in a few minutes it had swollen to the thickness of my forearm. He put a cold compress on it, and offered to help me undress; but I said I could manage all right, and by half-past-nine I was safely in bed.’
‘That was darned clever of you, darling, but the most filthy luck. Is it still giving you a lot of pain?’
‘It is now, rather; as I had to put all my weight on it when I ran across the room to slam the terrace door. Of course, its swelling up like that made it impossible for him to doubt that I really had hurt myself; so I don’t think he has the least suspicion that I was deliberately holding out on him; but the infuriating thing is that as long as I can hardly bear my own weight on it I can’t possibly get you downstairs on my back; and now that Helmuth is taking extreme measures it is terribly urgent that you should escape.’
As she finished speaking we caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Limping a bit Sally ran across the room, opened the terrace door, then ran back and slipped into her hiding-place, sliding the panel to after her. Meanwhile, I quickly disarranged the bedclothes, so that it would look as if a struggle had taken place on the bed, and wriggled down flat with my head lolling over to one side. I let my right arm hang right out of bed and, under cover of a trailing corner of the sheet, I once more grasped the champagne bottle; then I let myself go limp, as if I was unconscious.
I heard Helmuth come in, cross the room to the terrace door and shut it. Then he turned and walked over to my bed. My eyes were a fraction open and I could just see him under my lowered lids. He was still in his ceremonial robes and the moonlight glinted upon the white satin. He spoke to me. I made no reply, so he leant over and shook me.
That was my opportunity. Jerking up my arm I struck at him with the bottle. It did not, as I had hoped, smash in his nose, but caught him on the side of the face. Even so it was a fine bash and may well have cracked his cheek-bone. With a guttural cry he staggered back and fell to the floor.
For a few moments he lay moaning there, then he picked himself up. I had hoisted myself into a sitting position and, still clutching the bottle, was praying that he would come near enough for me to get another swipe at him; but he did not even look at me. With one hand held to his face, he tottered towards the door, fumbled his way out and banged it to behind him.
As soon as the sound of his uneven footsteps had died away I rapped on the panel and Sally came out. From the noises, she had guessed more or less what was happening, and I gleefully gave her details of that marvellously satisfactory come-back on our enemy.
‘I can’t help hoping that it is hurting him like hell,’ she smiled, ‘and I think in his case you must have a pretty big margin in your favour; but when you are tempted to hit people in future, don’t forget that unless you owe them the blow already the time will come when they’ll give it you back.’
‘You give me a kiss, and I’ll give you that back,’ I laughed, and we were in one another’s arms again.
Later we opened the champagne and drank it; the empty bottle will still prove a useful weapon.
Sally stayed with me till the moon had gone down and the first light of dawn was coming through the grating. It was an unforgettable night and, from her arrival in my room onwards, would have been one of unallayed happiness, had it not been that my battle with Helmuth is now rapidly approaching its final crisis, and Sally’s ankle makes it impossible for us to get away for another twenty-four hours, at least.
We felt that if she rested all today, the ankle might be well enough for her to get me downstairs tonight, or anyhow tomorrow night, which is the last before the Midsummer Night’s meeting of the Brotherhood; but that in the meantime we positively dared not take a chance on her being able to do so, and must take any other measures we could think of which might possibly spike Helmuth’s guns.
Naturally my thoughts reverted to Julia and Uncle Paul, and I suddenly realised that now Sally had come over to my side it should not be difficult to get them down here. After our last meeting, and my reconciliation with Helmuth, they would be certain to regard anything I said in a letter to them as the outcome of a worsening of my mental state, so it was most unlikely that they would make an immediate response to an S O S from me. But there was no question about Sally’s sanity, so if she got in touch with them and told them it was absolutely imperative that they should catch the first train to Llanferdrack, it was a hundred to one that they would agree to do so.
A letter would take too long, so we agreed that Sally should either telegraph or telephone to Julia as soon as she could today. The trouble is, though, that her ankle makes it out of the question for her to bicycle down to the village; and, as she is officially hors de combat, we could think of no reason she could give which would be even remotely plausible for asking for a car to take her there and back. So, unless she has a brain-wave, she will h
ave to telephone from the house; and while she is supposed to be sitting in her room with her foot up, it will be far from easy for her to snoop on Helmuth until he leaves the coast clear, without his spotting her.
I very much doubt if Sally’s ankle will be sufficiently better for us to make our attempt tonight, but whether it is or not she is going to come up to me a little before midnight, in case Helmuth decides to summon the Great Spider again.
It is now nearly dinner-time and he has not so far been up here today, so I still have no idea if he thinks that my attack on him was the result of his spider driving me frantic, or if he suspects that his abominable scheme broke down in some way and that I simply took the chance that came my way to slosh him.
I hope that his non-appearance can be taken as a sign that the blow I dealt him has put him temporarily out of action. Anyhow it has spared me further immediate anxieties, and as Sally has not been up here either—apart from Konrad’s routine appearances—I have spent the whole day in solitude.
Thank God, once again, for this journal, as writing this long account of my twenty-first birthday night has taken me all day, and has kept me from worrying too much about the possibility of Helmuth catching Sally while she is telephoning to Julia, and my own still horribly critical situation.
In the past twenty-four hours I have known the extremes of terror and happiness. Strange as it may seem I have already almost forgotten the former in the warm glow from the latter. I can still hardly believe it true that Sally loves me, but my head goes swimmy at the thought of her sweetness, courage and wisdom. I can hardly bear to wait until she comes to me again.
Monday, 22nd June
Helmuth left me alone last night, but my sweet Sally came in to me about a quarter-to-twelve. As she had not got her outdoor clothes on I knew at once that she had decided that she was not yet up to attempting to get me out. She was using a stick to take the weight off her foot and, as I feared, sufficient time has not elapsed for her ankle to show very much improvement.
The Haunting of Toby Jugg Page 36