It was a quarter of an hour before Nurse Cardew came in and found me like that. She promptly pushed my chair back and got me down into it, while scolding me for taking such a risk of injuring myself. I simply laughed at her and said that I could have hung on there for an hour or more without serious discomfort, had I wished.
She looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘I don’t believe it—unless you were taking some of the weight on your feet.’
I said I didn’t think that I had been, not perceptibly, anyhow; upon which she told me to put my hands on her shoulders and try to stand up.
I tried, and I couldn’t manage it. But she is amazingly strong for a girl, and she practically lifted me into an upright position. With one hand grasping the grating and the other round her neck we found that I could just remain erect for a moment of two.
Nurse Cardew says that is a sure sign that my back is mending; and that although we must go very carefully, if I practise standing like that for a short time every day, until I can take the whole of my own weight, there is a real chance that I may eventually be able to walk again. I gather that I should be doing well if I could walk from one room to another unaided by this time next year but, to me, even such a modest prospect is wildly exciting.
Besides, once I can manage a dozen steps they would let me have crutches. They daren’t as things are, for if a crutch slipped I should go flat on my face, or on my back, and if my head struck something hard I might kill myself. But if I was strong enough to recover my balance there would be no danger of that, and with the aid of crutches I could get about all over the place.
This really is terrific, and Nurse Cardew seemed as pleased as I was. She has a nice smile that lights up her freckled face, and really makes her quite pretty while it lasts. But like a fool I spoilt the whole thing by asking her if she managed to keep Helmuth in his place last night; and got the tart answer to ‘Mind your own business.’
I knew that she had had dinner with him because she told me she was going to yesterday afternoon. She asked me if I minded having my evening massage a little earlier than usual, so that she would have longer to change out of uniform. Naturally I agreed; I could hardly have done otherwise, and I forbore to make any comment.
However, a few minutes after having snapped me up this morning she resumed the subject of her own accord. She said:
‘I do wish you would try to get these horrid ideas about Dr. Lisický out of your head. It was kind of him to ask me to have dinner with him, and I hope he does again. He couldn’t have been more charming, and the pre-war atmosphere of candlelight and wine made a nice change for me from the routine of having my meals served on a tray in the small library.’
There was nothing much I could say to that which would not have led to another row, so I let it pass. I wish, though, that she had been here as a fly on the wall when Helmuth was discussing the replacement of Deb, and had heard him say that it would be ‘fun to have someone fresh to sleep with’, as I am quite sure that he would never bother to ask her to dine with him unless he had designs on her.
As she is so young Helmuth may have decided that the best policy is not to rush his fences. On the other hand it may be a case of ‘still waters run deep’. No girl can be a nurse and remain ignorant of sex, and this one looks healthy enough to have the usual urges of her age. If she had been ‘educated’ at Weylands she would be a veteran by this time. Still, I don’t believe, somehow, that she is that kind.
Those queer footsteps came again last night, and I heard them twice; first at eleven o’clock, as before, and, as I was wakeful, again about one o’clock. The second time they were going back up the stairs. Yet there cannot be any staircase there. It hardly seems possible that the Thing could make that sort of noise, yet it gave me a slight fit of the jitters. Thank God tomorrow is Thursday. Unless Fate plays me some scurvy trick to prevent Uncle Paul turning up, within twenty-four hours now I’ll be a free man again.
Thursday, 4th June
Last night it was calm with a clear sky, so for the first time I saw the full effect of a bright moon in this room. Praises be, there is no thick bar of it on the floor, as there was downstairs, for it does not shine in direct through the grating. It comes through the holes in the chapel roof, then filters through here filling the room with a soft radiance; but it was not strong enough to throw a shadow of the criss-cross bars of the grill.
As the appearance of the Horror is so tied up in my mind with moonlight, I was naturally in a pretty nervous state; and when the footsteps came again at eleven o’clock I broke out into a sweat. But nothing happened and after a bit I managed to get off to sleep.
This morning, while I was sitting in the sunshine on my terrace, I went over in my mind what I mean to say to Uncle Paul. As he has always been very decent to me I dislike the idea of being tough with him; but I am afraid that is the only way I can make certain of getting him to stand up to Helmuth.
I have always been rather sorry for my uncle, as in the natural course of events he should have come in for his share of the Jugg millions and be a rich man in his own right. But that he did not, and will be almost entirely dependent on me after I attain my majority, is largely his own fault. His early life, before he married Julia, was really rather a shocking record of weakness and stupidity.
When he came down from Cambridge in 1917, my grandfather secured him a commission in the Welsh Guards; but early in 1919 he got tight one night at the Berkeley, and struck a waiter, who was trying to persuade him to go home. Naturally that led to a pretty nasty stink and I gather that he narrowly escaped being cashiered; but they let him off with sending in his papers. The old man sent him to South Africa for a couple of years, to be out of the way while he sowed the rest of his wild oats, then brought him home in 1921, and put him into the offices of our Newcastle shipyards.
There he got involved with a typist and his father had to pay a tidy sum to prevent an action for breach of promise being brought. He was transferred to London after that, so that an eye could be kept on him, but that didn’t do much good. He was always at the races instead of the office, and in the next few years my grandfather had to pay up his racing debts on three occasions.
Then he got into the hands of a real top-line card-sharper; one of the chaps who do things on the grand scale with a nice little house in Mayfair, run a perfectly straight game for a whole season and take just one mug for a ride in a big way at the end of it. In the season of 1925 Uncle Paul was the mug selected, and in an all-night session he was stung for seven thousand pounds.
It all appeared perfectly above-board, as there were scores of other gamblers who were prepared to swear to the honesty of the crook. My grandfather paid again, but that was the end. Uncle Paul was sent abroad with a thousand a year, payable monthly, and told that in the future he could go bankrupt or go to prison, but he would not get another cent.
In 1928 he married Julia. I have no doubt that he was in love with her on account of her bewitching beauty; but, in addition, she is connected with the noble Roman house of Colona, and I think he thought that a respectable marriage would put him right with his father. But it didn’t. Albert Abel I would not even receive them; and Julia has no money of her own, so they took the Willows and settled down there in the hope that the old man would relent.
That is where Uncle Paul was unlucky. Before sufficient time had elapsed for his father really to appreciate that he had turned over a new leaf the air-crash put an end to his chances. So poor Uncle Paul’s own income is still no more than it was when he had the little house at Kew.
Later
Uncle Paul has been and is now on his way back to London. He arrived in time to lunch with Helmuth and immediately afterwards Helmuth brought him up here.
Perhaps it is the result of having lived for three years in an area constantly subject to air-raids, but I thought Uncle Paul was looking a lot older. He can’t be much more than forty-three, but his red hair has got a lot of grey in it now and the pouches under his eyes
are heavier than ever, so he might easily be taken for fifty. All the same, his ruddy face does not look unhealthy, and he greeted me with his usual hearty manner.
‘Hello, old boy! It’s grand to see you again. Wish I could have come down before, but this cussed war keeps me so feahf’lly busy. Never realised in the old days that serious farming took up so much time; still, we must all do what we can, eh?’
Helmuth was standing in the doorway, looking like a benevolent Bishop. I had feared that I might have considerable trouble getting rid of him; but not a bit of it. With a smile, he said: ‘I’m sure you would like to have a talk with your uncle alone, so I will leave you now.’ And off he went. I heard his footsteps echoing on the stone stairs, so I am quite sure that he did not linger to listen through the keyhole to what I had to say about him.
Meanwhile Uncle Paul was saying how Julia had sent me her fondest love, and that when he had shown her my letter she had wanted to come too; but that he hadn’t let her because last week she was in bed for several days with a nasty go of summer ‘flu and, although she is up again now, he didn’t think she was really fit enough to make such a tiring journey.
In view of the way I meant to deal with my uncle I was by no means sorry that she had not come; but I was a bit perturbed by the apparent indifference with which Helmuth had left us on our own, and debarred himself from the possibility of butting in on us at a critical juncture. It argued enormous self-confidence on his part, or else that he had already anticipated me and fixed Uncle Paul over lunch. So, after we had exchanged platitudes for a bit, I sought to test the situation by saying:
‘I don’t know if Helmuth has mentioned it to you, Uncle, but he and I haven’t been on awfully good terms lately.’
‘I say, old boy! I’m feahf’lly sorry to hear that.’ Uncle Paul looked a shade uncomfortable, but he had not answered my question, so I persisted:
‘He and I hold distinctly different views as to the state of my health; and I was wondering if by any chance he had suggested to you that the injury to my spine might now be having an unfortunate effect on my brain?’
Uncle Paul looked really uncomfortable at that, and began to shuffle his large feet about, as he replied: ‘To tell you the truth, old man, he did say something to that effect. Nothing definite, you know; but just that recently you seemed to be getting some rather potty ideas into your head. If I’d taken what he said seriously I’d have been damn’ worried—feahf’lly upset. But I didn’t; and anyone with half an eye can see that you’re as fit as a two-year-old.’
‘Thanks, Uncle,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m glad you feel that, because one of the reasons why I asked you to come down was to make a request which you may think rather unreasonable. I know it will sound to you like an invalid’s whim, and one that is going to cause quite a lot of needless trouble; but I have given the matter very careful consideration and I am absolutely set on it. I don’t like being here at Llanferdrack, and I want you to make immediate arrangements for my removal.’
Evidently Helmuth had briefed him on that one, as he produced all the arguments against it that Helmuth had used to me. I let him ramble on for a couple of minutes, then I said:
‘All right, let’s leave that for a minute, while I put up to you another idea. You will consider this one much more startling, but I have excellent reasons for making my request. I want you to sack Helmuth.’
His pale blue eyes fairly popped out of his head. ‘Sack Helmuth!’ he repeated. ‘My dear old boy, you can’t be serious. I mean, what’s he done?’
‘What he’s done,’ I said, ‘is to make himself a sort of Himmler, so far as I am concerned. He has got this bee in his bonnet that I am going nuts, so he is now treating me as if I were an escaped Borstal boy of fifteen. And I won’t bloody well have it! Do you know that during the past month or more he has had the impertinence to stop all my letters to Julia?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, he told me that. He was afraid it would upset us if we knew that—well, you know what I mean. Got the idea that you were going gaga, or something.’
‘Look, Uncle.’ I caught his glance and held it. ‘I am as sane as ever I was; but if I were going gaga who are the first people who ought to be informed of that?’
‘Myself and Julia,’ he admitted a bit sheepishly.
‘Right, then,’ I cracked in. ‘Helmuth has exceeded his duties and abused his position. I am now making a formal request to you as my Guardian that you should sack him.’
‘But I can’t, old man. It just isn’t on, you know. With the best will in the world I couldn’t do that. You seem to forget that he is a Trustee.’
‘What about it?’ I retorted. ‘In just over a fortnight I shall attain my majority. On June the twentieth the Board of Trustees will cease to have any further function. The whole outfit has to cash in to me, then it goes up in smoke. It is you, Uncle, who seem to have forgotten that.’
He gave me an unhappy glance from beneath his red eyebrows. ‘Of course, Toby old boy, I quite see what you mean. But, all the same, after all these years we can’t just kick Helmuth out. It wouldn’t be playing the game.’
My tone was acid as I remarked: ‘After nearly a year as a helpless cripple, I am no longer interested in games. Helmuth is endeavouring to keep me here against my will, and I am not going to stand for it. I want to leave Llanferdrack, and leave at the earliest possible moment.’
‘But hang it, old chap! We’ve just been into that and you couldn’t be better situated than you are here as long as there is a war on.’
Feeling that I had now got to make him face up to the issue, I said firmly: ‘That is beside the point. I want to get out, and I’m going to get out. If you’re afraid to sack Helmuth leave it to me, and I’ll do it myself in a fortnight’s time. But either he goes, or you take me with you when you leave. Now, what about it?’
For a moment he sat in miserable silence, then he muttered: ‘Toby, this isn’t like you. I’m really beginning to be afraid that there is something in what Helmuth said, and that you’re no longer quite all right in the upper storey.’
I hadn’t wanted to discuss the implications of that idea with him, as if Helmuth does succeed in getting me into a loopy-bin I may never get out; but Helmuth may have already put that possibility into his head, so on second thoughts I decided that it would be best to put all the cards on the table, and bluff for all I was worth that I was completely confident that even if I was certified I would manage to regain my freedom later. I gave him a calm, steady smile, and threw the cat among the pigeons.
‘You know perfectly well, Uncle, that you have never talked to a saner man than I am at this moment. Since Helmuth has given you the idea that I am going nuts, there is something else I’ve got to tell you. It is my considered opinion that for criminal ends he has been deliberately trying to create that impression.’
‘Oh, come, old man! That’s a frightful thing to say about a chap. After all, he is one of us—even if he is a Czech. And why in the world should he?’
‘Because he wants to keep his hold over me. You know as well as I do that he and Iswick are virtually running the Board of Trustees at the moment. If it could be shown that I am unfitted to take over, they would go on running it. And that’s what they want. That might benefit certain innocent parties too, Uncle; such as yourself—but only for a time.’
‘What the hell are you driving at?’ he protested.
I shrugged, and put up my big bluff. ‘Simply this. If Helmuth could get me certified you, as well as he, would continue to enjoy the directors’ fees and other perks that you get from being a Trustee. But, clever as Helmuth is, he could not succeed in stalling me out of my inheritance indefinitely. Sooner or later the doctors are going to agree that I am fit to handle my affairs. Once that happens the balloon goes up. I’ll be Jugg of Juggernauts and all the rest of the caboodle. For those who have stood by me nothing will be too good, but God help anyone who has lent Helmuth a hand, either actively or passively, to play his dirty game.’
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I felt the time had come to be really tough; so after a moment’s pause I went on: ‘One way and another you’ve been jolly decent to me, Uncle Paul, and I’m very grateful to you; but you haven’t been ill-rewarded for giving me a home. The Trustees agreed that I should be brought up in the sort of surroundings I should have enjoyed if my father had still been alive. Queensclere and Kensington Palace Gardens were kept on, and you were allowed twenty thousand a year to maintain them as a suitable background for me. I couldn’t have cost you much more than a twentieth of that, and the rest was yours to play around with as you liked.
‘For thirteen years you have lived like a Prince on my money. You have had your hunters, your racing-stable, your shooting, and trips to Deauville and the South of France whenever you felt that way inclined. I don’t grudge you one moment of the fun you’ve had. All I want to know this afternoon is if you wish it to go on?’
He stared at me, his mouth, under his brushed-up Guards moustache, a little agape. Then he stammered: ‘Is—is this what you meant when you asked me to come down to see you about—about future financial arrangements?’
‘That’s it, Uncle,’ I said. ‘Until quite recently I have always had it in mind that, when I come of age, I would make a settlement to ensure that you and Julia should have everything in reason that you wanted for the rest of your lives. I’d still like to do that; but I’m in a spot. You may think some of my present views a little eccentric, but you know darned well that I am not insane, If anyone has gone a bit haywire it is Helmuth. But you have got to side with either him or me. I am appealing to you now as my legal Guardian; and if you do as I wish you are going to be in clover; not for a few months only but for good and all.
The Haunting of Toby Jugg Page 23
