Recently Rommel seems to have been having it all his own way in Libya, and the worst news so far came in yesterday. Tobruk has fallen, without any siege at all. Sally told me about it and we talked of the campaign for a few minutes. It seems a terrible thing to have happened when it held out so long and gallantly before. We must have some rotten Generals in Africa now.
After Sally and I had kissed a lot and said many tender things to one another, she told me that she had found it impossible to telephone Julia.
In the morning, soon after the maid had brought in Sally’s breakfast tray, Helmuth came to her room. He had a glorious black eye and the rest of the left side of his face was one huge purple bruise. Having briefly explained how he came by his injuries, he asked her to bandage him up.
Thank goodness it did not occur to him to go to her right away, as he would have found the room empty and, if he had waited there, no normal excuse could have explained her absence, as she did not leave me until nearly six o’clock.
Anyhow, she sent him out while she got on a dressing-gown, then greased his hurts and swathed his head in lint. During the process he told her that the waxing moon seemed to be having a worse effect on me than ever, and he had come to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to have me put in a straitjacket. Then he went on to say that unfortunately he could give no more time to me at the moment, as the ‘Ancient Society of Christian Druids’ were to meet here on Tuesday, and he still had all the final arrangements to make.
About eighty people are expected and, according to Helmuth’s story, a midnight service is to be held in the chapel, after which the congregation will remain to witness the rising of the sun. As the visitors will be up all night none of them will require beds, but accommodation has to be provided for them to change into their ceremonial robes and refreshments to sustain them both on their arrival and before their departure in the midsummer dawn.
No extra staff is being taken on, as they will wait upon themselves; but it is quite an undertaking to get together enough food for such a crowd, and every hire-car for twenty miles around will have to be mobilised to bring them from the station and fetch them again the following morning. So Helmuth, with a very sore jaw, was about to begin a trying day, during most of which he expected to be glued to the telephone.
The Christian Druid idea certainly provides a very good cover for this sinister meeting, as Wales was the last refuge of the ancient Druids, and I believe the genuine modern ones still meet at places like Stonehenge and Avebury to watch the rising of the Midsummer Day Sun; while the Christian touch gives a plausible reason for their first holding a service in the chapel.
Such villagers as hear about the party will undoubtedly take it to be a form of Eisteddfod, and the small permanent staff here are so completely under Helmuth’s thumb that if he orders them to bed at their usual hour none of them would dare to risk staying up with the idea of spying on the proceedings. And, anyhow, if the curiosity of some bolder spirits overcomes their fear of him, they will probably meet with the same type of horrifying experience that I had near the Abbot’s grave, at Weylands.
Sally knew that as it was a Sunday there was not much chance of Helmuth going out on estate work, and that had been rendered even less by the battering I had given him. The additional factor that he had all this telephoning to do had decided her that her chance of getting a trunk call through to Kent, without his finding out what she was up to, was pretty near to zero.
However, my Sally is not the type to throw her hand in; so she wrote out a long telegram to Julia, pinned a pound note on to it, and wrote a letter to the local postmaster asking him to send it off at once if he could, or, if regulations forbade sending wires on Sundays, first thing this morning. Then she put the lot in an envelope, addressed it, gave it to the maid when her lunch tray was brought up, and tipped the girl five bob to take it down to the village. As the postmaster is the grocer, and lives above his shop, there can hardly be any hitch about her delivering it to either him or his wife; so by this time Julia should have it.
Sally says her telegram ran to nearly a hundred words, so there is no possibility of Julia misunderstanding it or failing to appreciate its urgency; moreover, it suggested that to satisfy herself fully about my condition it would be a good thing if she and Uncle Paul brought a doctor with them. I feel confident that they will not ignore such an S O S from my professional nurse; so they may be here tonight, or, at all events, not later than midday tomorrow.
My darling Sally had slept all the afternoon, so she was not a bit tired, and we talked until early this morning. She lay on the bed beside me all the time and it was absolute bliss. If only I can get well I swear I’ll make her marry me. She is unique, superb, adorable and I am absolutely crazy about her.
Later
All is well. Sally’s telegram did the trick. Julia and Uncle Paul arrived shortly after tea. With them they brought a Dr. Arling. Helmuth was out when they arrived so they first went to see Sally, then they came up to me.
Uncle Paul looked nervous and unhappy, but Julia was as sweet, competent and sympathetic as ever. Apparently Sally had thought it better not to go into details in front of a strange doctor about Helmuth practising the Black Art; she confined herself to saying that she was convinced that I was 100 per cent sane, and that when I had told them my story she would confirm the essential parts of it.
I felt, too, that it would be asking too much of a completely strange doctor to expect him to believe in the Great Spider, at a first interview, and that it would only serve to prejudice him unfavourably about the state of my mind. So I told Julia that I would like to have a private talk with her later, to put her au courant with what had happened here since her last visit, and suggested that to start with the Doctor should put me through a preliminary examination.
That was what we had in mind, darling,’ she agreed. ‘Then if Dr. Arling finds that Nurse Cardew is right about you, it may not be necessary to bother him with the sort of accusations you made against Helmuth before. We can take you away with us and sort all that out later.’
Such an arrangement suited me all right, and the Doctor went ahead. He is a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a sharp nose and a big, bulging forehead that gives him the appearance of having an outsized brain. He seemed to know his stuff, too. For nearly an hour-and-a-half he questioned me about my early life, upbringing, habits and appetites; and it was no random questionnaire either, as the whole of the enquiry was aimed at ascertaining my mental reaction in scores of different circumstances.
At length he said: ‘You will appreciate, Sir Toby, that most mental aberrations are periodic, so I could not give you a clean bill except after prolonged observation; but your mind does not show any signs of disturbance at the moment. If, while in your present state, you express the wish to be removed from Dr. Lisický’s care, I feel it that those responsible for your well-being would not be justified in refusing such a request.’
Nothing could have been more satisfactory; for, of course, Uncle Paul and Julia at once agreed, and said that they would take me away with them.
As it was getting on for my bath-time, I asked Julia to come up again when she had finished dinner, so that we could have a heart-to-heart; but she said that after the shock of Nurse Cardew’s telegram, the business of having to get hold of a brain-specialist of Dr. Arling’s status at a moment’s notice, and the long journey from Kent, she felt terribly done up. So would I mind very much if she went to bed directly after dinner and we had our chat tomorrow?
Now it is definitely settled that I should leave here with them, there is no longer any great urgency about our going into Helmuth’s criminal conduct, so it was decided that she should come up about half-past-ten in the morning, and we would have a long session then.
I was simply dying to tell Sally the great news of our triumph, so I asked Julia to give her a message that, if her ankle was well enough, I should very much like her to come up and sit with me after dinner.
Helmuth
will be mad with rage when he hears that Sally and I got the best of him after all. He will be still madder tomorrow night when he finds that as the owner of Llanferdrack I have the police here to take the names of all his ‘Christian Druids’ on arrival, as trespassers; and have forbidden the use of the chapel for their abominations.
Obviously, this is no case in which I can prosecute him for his conspiracy against me. At the moment I can do no more than give him the sack. But I do not mean to let matters rest there. I am determined to hoist his infernal Brotherhood with their own petard. They meant to use my money to foster Communism in Britain, and now I am going to use it to drive them out of the country. I am prepared to spend a million, or more if need be, on the job.
If the police can get me their names for trespassing tomorrow night that will enable me to open a dossier for each of them; and if that fails I can always start my investigation by listing the staff at Weylands. I will employ half-a-dozen detective agencies, all working independently, to watch these people in secret and uncover their private lives. Sooner or later I’ll get enough evidence against a number of them to have them brought to trial for blackmail, industrial sabotage, and communicating official secrets to a foreign Power; and I’ll make things so hot for the rest of them that they will be glad to take refuge with their brother thugs in Moscow.
By the time I’ve done my stuff I shall be quite content to leave Helmuth to the tender mercies of his Infernal Master. Unless I am much mistaken, for having started all this, the Devil is going to be very, very angry with Dr. Helmuth Lisický.
Later
I hardly know how to write this. A terrible thing has happened. One that I would not have believed possible. It has shaken my faith in all humanity.
Sally has just left me and in a few minutes Konrad will be coming up to settle me down for the night. That is why I am scribbling this now. If I don’t, and am not able to re-read it in my own writing tomorrow morning, I shall believe that I dreamed it—that it was part of a nightmare—or that I am beyond dispute a madman who is subject to the most ghastly hallucinations. But it happened only a quarter-of-an-hour ago. There is no shadow of doubt about it. This thing is beyond words appalling, and my mind is still numb with the shock. I cannot yet make any attempt to analyse how the fact I have discovered is likely to affect my own situation—except that in a general sense it menaces me with black disaster. I only know that I am overwhelmed with grief and misery—and that it happened. It really happened. It is true.
After dinner Sally came up to me. We made love. We talked; mainly of the visitors. After three days’ rest her ankle is better, but still far from strong; and she was greatly relieved that it would not, after all, be necessary for us to take a gamble on its bearing up during an attempt to get me away tonight.
As the summer dusk deepened we suddenly noticed that artificial light was mingled with it. Sally pointed to the grating and said: ‘Helmuth and Konrad must be preparing the chapel for tomorrow night; there are lights on down there.’
For a moment we sat in silence and the faint sound of voices drifted up to us, confirming her surmise. Getting up she limped quickly over to the grille. Its lower edge is over five feet from the floor, but being tall for a girl she could easily see over it and down into the chapel.
‘Well?’ I asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Something I think you ought to see,’ she replied in so low a voice that I only just caught her words.
I threw back the bedclothes and did the wriggle that throws my useless legs sideways, so that they dangle over the edge of the bed. Sally came across to me and helped me to my feet. For a few seconds I took my own weight while she turned round so that I could put my hands on her shoulders; then, step by step, I followed her over to the grating.
My first glance down into the chapel showed me that considerable activity was going on. A broad strip of red carpet had been laid down the centre of the nave, and on either side of it there were fifteen or twenty mattresses and scores of cushions, which, presumably, had been collected from all over the house. In the side aisles some men were erecting long trestle tables. The scaffolding round one of the pillars that support the roof interfered with my view, so I could not see them very plainly; but it was easy to pick out Helmuth, as one side of his face was still bandaged.
A woman in a dark cloak, who wore a red scarf tied round her head, was decorating the altar—but not with flowers. The candles on it gave ample light to see that she was making her artistic tribute in a medium that the Devil might well be expected to approve. She was arranging garlands and bunches of deadly nightshade, toadstools, hemlock, ivy, tares, pigweed and nettles.
She stepped back to admire the effect; then she turned towards me. It was Julia.
Tuesday, 23rd June
It is still very early in the morning, and I am writing this by first light. Fortunately I slept all yesterday afternoon, so although I have not slept at all during the night, I do not feel particularly tired. Anyhow, I can still get in a good couple of hours’ sleep before Konrad calls me, and God alone knows what will happen tomorrow—today I mean—so this may be the last chance I’ll have to make an entry in my journal, and I wish to record the splendid courage and devotion that Sally had shown in the desperate turn of my affairs.
The sight of Julia decorating an altar to Satan—even the thought of it now stuns me afresh—left me dumbfounded, stricken to the heart, hardly able to credit what I had seen with my own eyes, yet forced to because Sally had seen it too; and I knew inside myself that it explained all sorts of little things about Julia that had vaguely puzzled me in the past. Yet, at first, I could not bring myself to accept it as a fact, and the upheaval in my mind robbed me of all initiative. So Sally took charge.
As soon as she had got me back to bed, she said that she was terribly sorry for me, but that from what we had seen there could be no doubt at all that I had been ‘sold down the river’ by my own people.
She had spotted Dr. Arling among the men who had been helping Helmuth to erect one of the trestle tables, so he was in it too. Clearly my relatives were members of the Brotherhood, and the doctor was also a member. He had been brought down to pull the wool over my eyes and, no doubt, to remove me to a private asylum in due course. They were all actively abetting Helmuth in his criminal plot.
Sally’s view was that my only chance lay in her getting me away that night. Her ankle was still paining her but she declared that she would manage somehow. It was already half-past-nine so we had very little time to plan in before Konrad came up to take away my lamp.
Her main anxiety was whether she would be able to get me around the outside of the Castle. She thought she would be able to semi-piggy-back me downstairs, but it was going to be a terribly long haul from the side door to the place under the terrace to which we meant to lower my wheel-chair, and she feared that her groggy ankle might not stand up to it.
I was still too bemused by my recent discovery to think of any possible alternative, and it was she who had the idea of using Great-aunt Sarah’s secret staircase. It could lead nowhere except straight down to the chapel, and we knew that a flight of about twenty steps led up from the chapel floor to a side entrance, which gave on to the grass verge of the lake within a dozen yards of the spot where the chair would be.
That route was barely a third of the distance we should have had to cover along our old one, down the spiral stairs, along the passage and half-way round the Castle. Even allowing for the extra strain of getting me up the stone steps inside the chapel, the total effort required would be nothing like so great. I pulled my wits together sufficiently to produce the only snag I could think of—that the door at the bottom of the secret staircase might be locked, and its bolts rusted in with long disuse, so that we should not be able to get it open.
Sally countered that by saying she could get hold of some oil, a hammer, a small saw and other tools from the garage machine shop, and that she would bring with her candles as well as a torch; and that
even if it took us an hour to get the door open we would still have ample time to be out of the grounds well before dawn. She also pointed out that another advantage of going by the secret staircase was that we could be certain of not running into anyone on it; so there would be much less danger of our being caught.
I had no further objections to offer, and time was getting short; so I kissed her and blessed her and, after promising to be back shortly before midnight for our eleventh-hour bid for freedom, she left me.
The entry I made in my journal took me only a few minutes and I had hardly completed it when Konrad arrived. After he had gone the time of waiting passed with extraordinary swiftness because, I am ashamed to say, my mind was not really on the job ahead, but occupied with the most wretched speculations about Julia.
On Sally’s return the first thing we decided was that she should reconnoitre the secret stairway, to make certain that there was a door at its bottom and that it would be possible to get it open. She had brought quite a large bag of tools and, taking them with her, she disappeared through the panel, closing it after her.
Going into such a place alone at dead of night must have taken more courage than most girls possess, particularly when one knew of the evil things that lurked in the vicinity; but Sally never hesitated, and somehow I did not feel afraid for her, only rather humble at the thought that I should be loved by a girl with such a valiant heart.
But as time went by and she failed to reappear I did get worried. I endeavoured to convince myself that she had found the door and was working on it; but I could not help imagining that she had met with some accident, and I began to pray frantically for her safe return.
She must have been down there over three-quarters-of-an-hour, but at last I heard her coming back and, dusty, begrimed, dishevelled, she stumbled, still panting, through the panel opening.
The Haunting of Toby Jugg Page 37