Dennis Wheatley - The Haunting of Toby Jugg

By the spring of 1939 Helmuth had established himself so firmly as the arbiter of my fate that no one even thought of contesting his opinion when he announced that, instead of my going up to Cambridge, as my father had done, at the beginning of 1940, he felt that I would derive much more benefit from being taken by a suitable mentor on a two year tour of Europe, which would include a stay of a few weeks in the Ruhr, the Saar, Hamburg, Turin and each of the other great industrial centres.

The last point was especially calculated to appeal to the Trustees, and when it emerged that Helmuth was willing to resign his mastership at Weylands to act as my cicerone, they not only jumped at the idea but urged that the tour should be extended to two and a half years, so that the last six months of my minority might be spent visiting the industrial zones of the United States. It was even urged that we should make an earlier start, and, as my eighteenth birthday was in June, set out on our travels soon after the ending of the summer term. However, the authorities at Weylands were unwilling to release Helmuth before the end of the year, and many Weyland pupils stayed up till they were nearly nineteen, so it was agreed that we should put in a final autumn term there.

But things did not turn out according to plan. We were still up on Mull in the first week of September when the war broke out. I told Helmuth that Sunday night that in the morning I proposed to take the first train south from Oban, and, on reaching London, volunteer for the R.A.F.

There was the hell of a row. Apparently it had never occurred to him that I might react to the news like that. But he soon got his bearings and, once he had recovered his temper, he began to produce all sorts of well reasoned arguments in favour of my holding my hand for a bit.

His first line was that it would be silly to rush into the ranks when, just as in the last war, every well educated youngster would, in due course, be needed as a junior officer. Then he said that this time the Government was better prepared, and did not need volunteers, as they had already arranged to call up such men as they required by classes. Finally he urged that so much had gone into fitting me to hold great responsibilities that my life was not my own to throw away; the least I could do was to submit the matter to my Trustees and hear what they had to say, before jeopardising all the hopes that they had placed in me.

Thinking things over a few weeks later I came to the conclusion that none of these arguments had weighed with me in the least. I was a strong, healthy young man of eighteen and a bit, with a very fair knowledge of aircraft design and engineering. I knew perfectly well what I ought to do, and what I wanted to do. Yet I did not do it.

Helmuth's will proved stronger than mine. The battle between us went on for over a week. Again and again I tried to screw my courage up to the point of defying him and walking out. Several times I was on the verge of slipping out at night and making off in the motorboat to the mainland. Yet I could never quite bring myself to do either.

I feel certain now that it was neither his reasoning nor my ingrained respect for his authority which was the paramount factor in keeping me there against my will. It was the silent, compelling power that at times lies behind the steady regard of his tawny eyes. He used a form of hypnotism to bind me like a spell.

I wonder what luck I'll have when I try that out on Taffy this evening. If I succeed I'll be out of here by the end of the week. I have got to be; the new moon rises on Thursday.

Tuesday, 19th May

It was no good. I have never before realised how difficult it is to catch a person's glance and hold it for any length of time. Taffy was engaged for his strength not his brain. He is only about five feet ten, but broad and long armed, like a gorilla. His hair is dark and curly, and his eyes are small; but his face is as round as a full moon, and he has a curiously feminine quality. He stood there, docile as usual, at the foot of the bath, for a full ten minutes while I was soaping myself, but every time I said something to him to attract his attention he just looked at me for a second, then looked quickly away again.

At last, in desperation, I said to him: 'Taffy, have you ever tried staring anyone out?'

'No, indeed, Sir Toby,' he replied. 'What would I want to be doing a thing like that?'

'For fun,' I said. 'Come on; look straight at me and let's see which of us can make the other blink first.'

'Fun it is, is it?' he repeated with a sheepish grin; and for a moment his round brown eyes peeped at me from beneath the dark, curling lashes that many a girl would envy. But almost at once he dropped his glance, gave an embarrassed laugh, and muttered: 'A strange game it is, and I no good at it.'

I felt that it might arouse the oaf's suspicions and a permanent resistance if I persisted further, at the time; so I chucked up the attempt and ate my dinner in a very bad humour. But I am hoping that I'll catch him napping some time today. A good chance is bound to present itself sooner or later; the trouble is that I have no time to waste.

After dinner last night, to take my mind off my failure with Taffy, instead of switching my radio off at the end of the nine o'clock news I listened to a broadcast on the war. I must confess that I haven't been taking very much interest in the war of late, owing to preoccupation with my own troubles; but hearing this commentator quite cheered me up, as it seems that in this past week or so things haven't been going too badly for us.

The best bit of news is that General Alexander has succeeded in extricating all that was left of our army from Burma. It must have been hell for them all these months, fighting desperate rearguard actions in that ghastly country against enormously superior forces and it is a miracle that they were not surrounded and cut to pieces.

It was Alexander, I remember, who assumed command in the last phase of Dunkirk, after Gort had gone home, and was himself the last man to leave the beach there. I think he must be a really great General, as any fool can make a breakthrough if the odds are in his favour and he has plenty of supplies, but it requires military genius of the first order to conduct a successful retreat with war weary troops who are short of everything. Now that he is back across the Chindwin, on the Indo Burmese frontier, it should be easier to get supplies and reinforcements up to him; so let's hope that he will be able to hang on there and prevent those filthy little Japs from swarming down into India.

The Ruskies are still getting the worst of it in the south, and the Germans claim to have driven them from their last foothold in the Crimea; but the success of Marshal Timoshenko's counteroffensive against Kharkov more than makes up for that. Those Russian battles are on a scale that make our little set tos in Libya look like backyard brawls, and they must be costing the Nazis tens of thousands of casualties a week. If only the Russians can keep it up they will yet bleed Hitler's Reich to death.

This morning's bulletin was cheering, too. Yesterday Coastal Command put on another good show. Our bombers caught the Prinz Eugen off Norway, slammed several torpedoes into her, and raked the decks of her escorting destroyers with cannon fire. God, what wouldn't I give to be able to fly again!

As must be obvious to anyone who, knowing nothing of me comes upon this journal and has read so far, I got the better of Helmuth in the end. During those last three weeks on Mull, as he was constantly with me, his influence proved so strong that all my efforts to throw it off were in vain; and I was still in the same state when, on September the 24th, we returned to Weylands.

For the first week of the term I continued to be a bit befuddled and half persuaded by his arguments; but about a fortnight earlier old Wellard had died, and I imagine that Helmuth was already hard at it, intriguing with Uncle Paul and Iswick to get himself appointed to the vacant Trusteeship. Anyhow, on October 1st he was summoned to a meeting of the Trustees in London. After I had spent twenty four hours without seeing him my mind began to clear, and the next night I decided to make a bolt for it.