The Haunting of Toby Jugg (50 page)

On my insisting she took some of the clothes from my wardrobe and a couple of cushions to make a couch to lie on; then we parted with mutual exhortations to have courage, and with great tenderness.

The grey light of dawn was already throwing the criss-cross bars of the grating into relief, so I started to scribble this; but I hope that my sweet Sally has been sleeping for the past hour or more. I am now feeling very tired myself, so I will snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before Konrad comes to call me.

God alone knows what fresh ordeals the coming day will bring. I am alone in a dark world, but for the beacon of Sally’s love. That must and shall sustain me.

Later

If I were not so desperately afraid of what may happen in the next twenty-four hours to Sally and myself, I should be laughing at the comedy that has just taken place.

Within a few moments of entering the room Konrad noticed the disappearance of my wheel-chair. I had only just woken, so I had not got my wits fully about me; but I think my sub-conscious must have been concerning itself with the problem during my two-hour sleep, since I replied without hesitation:

‘The Archangel Gabriel appeared to me last night. He said that I no longer required it, and he took it away. I think he threw it in the lake.’

Konrad’s pale blue eyes almost popped out of his head. This cunning Ruthenian peasant is terribly superstitious. He would, I am sure, have bullied me unmercifully during these past three weeks had I not taken a leaf out of Helmuth’s book. He scared Taffy by telling him that I had the evil-eye. I told that story to Konrad soon after Helmuth made him my gaoler-bodyservant. Since then he has done his job with as little fuss as possible. He is still 100 per cent Helmuth’s man, but he has been mighty careful not to give me offence.

My quiet, unemotional statement about the Archangel having visited me, threw him into a paroxysm of terror. The chair was no longer in the room and he knew perfectly well that I could not possibly have disposed of it myself, so it was not altogether surprising that he should accept the suggestion that it had been removed by a supernatural agency.

He had already dumped my breakfast tray on my bed-table; and, instead of proceeding as usual to hand me my tooth-brush and the basin, he gave me a shifty glance then sidled quickly out of the room.

I gave three knocks for Sally. A moment later she almost tumbled through the panel opening, still half asleep.

‘Quick!’ I said. ‘Help yourself to a cup of coffee, and take some toast and fruit; then skip back to your hiding-place. Konrad has gone to fetch Helmuth and they will be up here in a few minutes.’

She poured the coffee, made a face as she gulped it down, took a handful of cherries off the plate, gave me a swift kiss on the nose, then stumbled back through the opening like a large sleepy child. I longed to call her back and put my arms round her. She is absolute heaven.

Konrad returned with Helmuth five minutes later. It is the first time I have seen him since I hit him with the bottle. He had the bandages off this morning but his eye is still black and blue.

I maintained my story about the Archangel, and for a moment I saw fear in his tawny eyes. Then his suspicions overcame his credulity. He went out on to the terrace, saw the gap in the battlement and, on looking over, the chair down by the lake-side. Striding back to me, he shouted:

‘That great hoyden Sally Cardew must be responsible for this! It was she who telegraphed for Julia. And now she’s tried to help you to escape; but it proved too much for her. I’ll teach that young bitch to double-cross me like this!’

‘Do, if you can find her,’ I mocked him. ‘But you won’t; because she’s gone back to London. And in due course she will bear witness against you in a criminal court.’

‘She won’t get the chance!’ he snapped. ‘I’ll soon have her traced and stop her tongue. The Brotherhood has plenty of ways of dealing with stupid or indiscreet people. It may interest you to know that Deborah Kain will be sailing from Cardiff in the hold of a tramp steamer today. If she does not die on the voyage round Africa she will eventually reach Persia, and be sent through to Russia. She came here to see you against my orders, and in the Soviet Union they know how to punish the servants who have failed them.’

Glad as I was to know that Britain was nurturing one less viper in her bosom, I could not help feeling sorry for the wretched Deb, as it was largely my fault that such a fate had overtaken her. But Helmuth was going on:

‘As for anyone bearing witness against me in a criminal court, you must be really mad if you think you will ever be in a position to prosecute me. After the dance you’ve led me I’m in no mood to show you further mercy. Tonight I mean to finish your business once and for all. The Brotherhood will invoke the Lady Astoroth to visit you here, and she will destroy your reason.’

Turning on his heel he flung out of the room, and I was left to contemplate anew the really desperate situation in which last night’s failure to get away has placed me.

I had continued to put a bold face on matters in front of Helmuth,
but I am feeling very far from bold. Sally’s love, and her faith in the inevitable triumph of good over evil, alone sustained me. But I am powerless to help myself and I do not see how she can help me further. Moreover, while I now fully accept her wonderful teaching, it is a long-term policy; it may well be that in a past life I once drove someone mad, and in this one must pay the penalty by being driven mad myself.

I have only one weak straw to cling to, and that is Julia. There can be no question about her being in with Helmuth. If further proof were needed, he gave it himself by disclosing that she had told him of Sally’s telegram, thus giving it away that Sally had come over to my side.

If Helmuth is with her at the moment, and mentions his disclosure, she will realise that I now know her to be in league with my enemies, and she may be ashamed to face me. But if she does not yet know that I know of her treachery she should be coming up to see me as she promised, quite soon now. If she does, there is just a chance that I may be able to save myself through her.

Later

It is afternoon. I am writing the following only because it is absolutely vital that I should do so. This time tomorrow I expect to be insane and my testimony will then be valueless.

I hereby make solemn declaration that I am now in my right mind; that the following is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with regard to the death of Julia Jugg.

I murdered her. Nurse Cardew was an accessory but an innocent one. She acted in defence of her crippled patient, in the belief that she could help to save him from a gang of criminals. The very fact that I shall not attempt to conceal the part she played is in itself testimony that she was innocent of the actual crime. What she did was done by my orders and the responsibility for Mrs. Paul Jugg’s death is entirely mine.

This is what occurred; so help me God.

A little after ten-thirty this morning, Tuesday the 23rd of June, 1942, Julia came up to see me as she had promised. Her demeanour was affectionate and unabashed. She sat down beside
my bed and, after talking trivialities for a few moments, by a casual question I extracted the information from her that she had not seen Dr. Helmuth Lisický since last night; as she had breakfasted in bed, only just got up, and had come straight up from her bedroom to me. I knew then that she knew nothing yet of my abortive attempt to escape last night, or that I realised that she was involved in the conspiracy against me.

I asked her when we were going to leave Llanferdrack.

‘Not till tomorrow, darling,’ she replied. ‘Dr. Arling wants to examine you again tonight in the moonlight to see if the moon really has a bad effect on you. But whether it has or not Paul and I mean to take you back with us to Queensclere tomorrow morning.’

Stretching out my hand, I took hers. Then I said quietly:

‘You are lying, Julia. You have been plotting with Helmuth to drive me mad tonight, so that Dr. Arling can take me away to some private asylum tomorrow.’

Her great eyes suddenly showed fear and consternation. She shook her head and struggled violently to drag her hand from my grasp; but I had a firm grip on it, and I went on:

‘It is useless to deny it, Julia. I saw you last night arranging those poisonous herbs and stinging nettles on the Devil’s altar. That was the most awful thing that has ever happened to me. It was like losing a limb. It was worse than when I was told that my back was broken and the odds were against my ever walking again.’

I paused and added in a husky voice: ‘Even now, terribly as you have hurt me, I hate having to hurt and bully you. But I’ve got to; because only you can save me from Helmuth, and only by regaining my freedom can I save you from the ghastly web in which you have enmeshed yourself. I suppose you were blackmailed into becoming a Satanist. I want to know the truth about that. Then we’ll make a plan to trick Helmuth at the last moment. Once I am free I mean to smash up this evil Brotherhood; but whatever you have done I’ll find a way to save you from them. You see, I want to help you to become clean and free again. So you must tell me the whole truth.’

‘I won’t!’ she moaned. ‘I won’t! Let me go! Let me go!’

‘Oh yes, you will,’ I said. ‘If you won’t talk freely I shall have to make you.’ Then I caught her glance and held it.

‘Let me go! Let me go!’ her voice grew louder, and tearing her glance from mine she wailed: ‘You beast! You’re trying to hypnotise me!’

I knew then that even at the price of giving Sally’s—Nurse Cardew’s—hiding-place away I must have help, otherwise my forlorn hope was doomed to failure. Stretching across Julia I rapped thrice sharply with my free hand on the secret panel.

In leaning over I had momentarily to loosen my grip on Julia’s hand. As the panel slid back and Sally came out Julia wrenched her hand from my grasp. Turning, she ran towards the door.

‘Quick, Sally!’ I cried. ‘For God’s sake catch her, and bring her back. I’ve got to hypnotise her by force. It’s our only hope.’

Sally darted after her and caught her in the middle of the room. For a few moments there ensued a horrid scuffle. The two women fought like tiger-cats. Julia’s long nails tore three furrows in Sally’s grimy cheek; then she got hold of a handful of Sally’s fuzzy hair and wrenched it out, while kicking violently at her shins. But Sally was much the stronger of the two. She hit Julia hard in the face, grabbed one of her arms and twisted it behind her back, then hurtled her across the room and forced her face down on to the bed.

I seized Julia by the shoulders, but by that time she had begun to scream for help; so I transferred by grip to her throat and, much as I hated having to do it, choked her into silence.

She was now sprawled over sideways on to the bed and face upwards across my middle. Stooping over her, I stared down into her eyes and ordered her to sleep.

But she shut her eyes firmly, so I had to get Sally to turn the lids back and hold them open.

Even then, Julia put up a terrific resistance, and after we had held her like that for a quarter of an hour she still had not given in. I had always heard that it is terribly difficult to hypnotise anyone against their will, but I was determined to go through with it.

I had been holding her down by the throat the whole time, and I began to choke her again, with the idea that if I reduced her to semi-consciousness that way she would no longer be able to
exert her will, and her resistance would give way. Her lovely magnolia skin began to go red in patches and her black eyes bulged from her head. Sally warned me to be careful, but I disregarded her advice. I eased the pressure a little, now and then, but kept my thumbs digging into Julia’s neck each side of her windpipe. It was horrible; but it worked.

Her eyes took on that curious look of the somnambulist and I knew that she had passed into an hypnotic sleep. I released my grip at once and Sally got her into the chair beside my bed. We gave her a glass of water and a few minutes to recover; then I started on her.

‘Now, Julia,’ I said, ‘I want the truth. When did you become a Satanist?’

‘When I was seventeen,’ she replied hoarsely.

Her answer staggered me; but details of my reactions to her story are irrelevant now.

‘How did it happen?’ I asked.

‘An old peasant woman in our village took me to a Witches’ Sabbath in the Alban hills.’

‘Did you go willingly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted all the things which were mine by right, but of which I had been cheated. She promised me that if I became a witch I should make a rich marriage.’

‘But you had great beauty and you were a daughter of the noble Roman house of Colona, so why shouldn’t you have made a rich marriage anyhow?’

‘No. My father was a Colona, but he was not married to my mother; that is why I felt myself to have been cheated. She was a peasant girl on his estate outside Rome, and I was brought up by her in a cottage that was almost a hovel.’

‘What happened after the Sabbath?’

‘My father rarely left the big house when he visited his estate, but one day soon after the Sabbath he came down to the village. He saw me washing clothes in the stream, and struck by my beauty he enquired who I was. When he found that I was his own daughter he expressed a wish to do something for me. He
sent me to school for two years, but after that I suffered a bitter disappointment. I had expected to become one of the family, but all he did was to make me his wife’s lady’s-maid.’

‘Was that what you were when you met Uncle Paul?’

‘Yes; and he was the rich husband I had been promised. He was not rich then, but he was a gentleman, so he could lift me by marriage to the status that was mine by right of blood; and while he was courting me he told me all about the Jugg millions. I realised that he must be the husband that had been sent for me by the Old One, and I felt certain that once I was married to him I would be able to get hold of a share of those millions.’

‘What happened after you came to England?’