Dennis Wheatley - The Haunting of Toby Jugg

Getting away presented no difficulties. I packed into one small suitcase some spare underclothes and a few personal belongings; then, having read a book till about half past three in the morning,

I quietly carried the case downstairs and strapped it on to the back of the first bicycle that I came upon in the staff bike shed. As it was seven miles to the station I had to take an unauthorised loan of the bike; but I knew that it would be returned in due course, since I meant to leave it in the station cloakroom and post the ticket for it to the school bursar.

At the station I slipped the ticked into an envelope that I had all ready for it, and at the same time posted a note that I had written to Julia, asking her to do her best to stop Helmuth trying to find me, and telling her that she was not to worry about me, as I should be very well looked after at the place to which I was going, and that I would write to her within the course of the next few weeks. Then, twenty minutes later, the milk train came in and took me to Carlisle.

As I was still technically a schoolboy I thought it possible that when my absence was discovered a hue and cry would start after me, and I was uncertain what powers the authorities might have to send me back, so I had already decided to take evasive action. London was the place they would naturally expect me to head for, so, instead, I took the train from Carlisle up to Glasgow. That afternoon I went to the City Recruiting Office there and volunteered for the R.A.F.

My age was then eighteen and three months, but I could have passed for a year older had I wished, as I was both tall and well built; also I was, as the police descriptions term it, 'A person of good address', so I had little fear of being rejected. But I did not mean to sign on in my own name, as it was quite on the cards that in another few hours the police would be looking for me, and the thought that I might be caught out in that part of the business made me go pretty hot under the collar.

I knew that I would have to show my identity card and there was no disguising the Weylands address, as it had been issued to me there the previous May; but my name had been inserted simply as JUGG, ALBERT, A., with no 'Sir' or 'Bart.' in a bracket behind it to give away my title, and the previous evening I had added the letters LER to both the block letter surname and my scrawled signature. It was a bit of a risk to take, as the card informs one that any alteration of it is punishable by a fine or imprisonment or both; but I felt that if I could get away with it the odds would be all against anyone up in Glasgow associating the missing heir to millions, Sir Toby Jugg, with Aircraftsman Albert Jugglerand get away with it I did.

I found those first few weeks in the R.A.F. extraordinarily exciting. A high proportion of my fellow recruits were Glasgow mechanics, but there were also clerks, salesmen, colonials, farmers, small tradesmen and other types, most of whom had previously been entirely outside my ken.

The life, too, was utterly different from anything I had ever known; although I did not find it as hard as I had expected, for we were excellently fed and very well looked after. No doubt the routine and restrictions inseparable from communal life under discipline would have palled after a bit, but to start with, for me, everything held the glamour of strangeness, and every new face I encountered held a thrilling real life story of effort and achievement or failure, which could usually be heard over a can of beer.

During the ten week that I was in the ranks I had no chance to get bored with any one set of companions, as in less than two months the grading system caused me to be transferred from one hutted camp to another four times. It takes a lot of people to keep an aircraft in the air, so out of the many who offered themselves comparatively few possessed the qualifications and had the luck to be graded for operational training: the others had to be content to serve as ground crews, signallers, clerks, tradesmen and in all the scores of jobs without the conscientious performance of which the operational people could not have functioned. But my youth, health, keenness and high standard of education led to my being picked as one of the lucky ones; and it was that which resulted in the discovery of my true identity.

My one object when I volunteered had been to become a fighter pilot, and constant application coupled with the O.K. from half dozen medical boards and selection committees had got me as far as this fourth station. When I had been there about ten days it came to my turn to be summoned for a personal interview with the Station Commander.

He asked me a few questions, glanced through my papers, and said: 'I see, Juggler, that you have made a pretty good showing, so far; and that your Flight Commander considers your possibilities to be above the average. I think he is right; so I propose to recommend you for a commission. You may not get it, but at all events you will be given your chance on transfer as a Cadet to Receiving Wing.'

I suppose the good man expected me to blush, stammer my thanks, salute smartly and float out as though my elation was so great as to render me airborne already. But my surprise was only equalled by my consternation, as I knew that if I let him have his way the next step was that somebody would be demanding a copy of my birth certificate. In consequence, I blurted out, a little awkwardly, that I did not want a commission; I wanted to become a Sergeant Pilot.

He went a shade redder in the face and said a trifle huffily: 'I cannot compel you, of course; but, presumably, you joined the Royal Air Force with the object of serving your country to the best of your ability. If, in the opinion of officers such as myself, who are practised in forming judgments of this kind, you are considered to have the fundamental qualities required for commissioned rank, you must surely see that it is your duty to accept our decision and do your best to obtain it.'

Before I could reply, another officer, a Flight Lieutenant who was sitting at a side table, stood up and said: 'D'you mind if I handle this, sir? I think I know the answer.'

The Group Captain looked a bit puzzled, but nodded his assent, and the Flight Lieutenant beckoned me to follow him into the next room.

As soon as the door was closed behind us he motioned me to a chair and offered me a cigarette. He was a lean, bronzed faced, tough looking little man of about thirty, with very blue eyes. When we had lit up, he grinned at me and said: 'I take it the birth certificate is the snag, isn't it Sir Toby?'

What the hell could I say? I knew I was caught out. It transpired that until the outbreak of war he had been a test pilot at Juggernauts the Jugg combine's biggest aircraft plant; and that he had recognised me from having met me on a visit that I paid to the factory with Helmuth in 1938.

I had watched the papers carefully, and no report of my disappearance had so far been published in them; so I took it that Julia had shown my letter to the Trustees and they thought it wiser to wait for me to reappear in my own time than to start a scandal by having me publicly hunted. But somebody on the Board must have talked, as Flight Lieutenant Roper had heard that I had run away from school in a letter he had had from a friend in his old firm.

He put it to me that I was in a jam. Sooner or later I was bound to be rumbled, and it might happen in circumstances where my CO. had no alternative but to send me for court martial on a charge of having made a false declaration to the recruiting authorities; and following that there might be a civil prosecution for having faked my identity card. He said that, as my motive had clearly been a patriotic one, he did not think either court would take a very serious view of the matter; but one could not be certain of that, as they could not afford to give the press a chance to publish the fact that anyone had been caught out breaking wartime security measures and allowed to get away with it and, I being who I was, it was certain the press would make it a headline story. So he thought that instead of going on as I was and risking anything like that I should be much wiser to let him try to sort matters out.