Dennis Wheatley - The Haunting of Toby Jugg

So off Sally went, and at any moment now I am expecting her to return with Comrade Deborah Kain.

Later

I've won! But what a session; and what a revelation! I am writing this now only to fill in time, as, anxious as Sally and I are to get off, it would be madness to make a start until Konrad is out of the way for the night. And our interview with Deb is well worth recording.

When she arrived she was pretty sullen, which was hardly surprising; but she became almost pleasant when I apologised for having troubled her, and said that I only wanted to ask her some questions, to set Nurse Cardew's mind at rest about certain things which it was suggested had happened here. Then I said:

'I want you to tell the truth, even if it appears to be unfavourable to myself, and if you do so I give you my word that I will say nothing to Owen Gruffydd of what I know about your affairs. Now; while you were here, did I at any time make any amorous advances to you?'

She looked very surprised, gave a quick glance at Sally and said: 'No. As a matter of fact I thought you were rather standoffish. You were always quite polite, but you hardly seemed to notice me as a person at all.'

'Right!' I said. 'When Dr. Lisicky discovered that on several occasions I had hypnotised you, and had an explanation with you about that which led to your leaving, did he reveal to you, or even suggest, that I had taken advantage of you while you were in a trance state?'

'No; he never said anything of that kind.' Her eyes widened as she added: 'Did you did you do that?'

'Certainly not,' I replied. 'But he seems to have given Nurse Cardew the impression that I did. Now, about the Doctor himself. Did he make amorous advances to you?'

'No,' she said firmly. 'He did not.'

Her denial took me by surprise, as it seemed quite pointless in view of all I knew, and the fact that Helmuth had thrown her out bag and baggage.

'Come, Deb!' I admonished her. 'I am not threatening you, and Nurse Cardew will promise not to repeat anything you may say to your detriment; but we want the truth. Dr. Lisicky told me that you were his mistress, and you confirmed that to me yourself, while you were in a trance. You can't deny it.'

She stubbornly shook her head. 'What I said in a trance you may have put into my mind; and if he said that of me it is because he is a vain and boastful man. He was lying.'

I saw that I was up against it, and there was only one thing to do. I said: 'AH right; I will believe you, if you look me in the face and swear to that.'

She fell into the trap. The second she had her eyes fixed on mine I shot out my right hand, pointed my first and second fingers at them and gave the order: 'Sleep, Deb! At once! Go to sleep this instant!'

The old formula worked like magic. There was barely a flicker of resistance before her eyes began to glaze and the heavy eyelids dropped over them.

'Good,' I said, after a moment. 'Now we will start all over again. I am still not threatening you, but I order you to disclose the naked truth that lies in your subconscious. Were you telling the truth just now about me?'

'Yes.' Her voice had gone dull and toneless. 'You never laid a finger on me.'

'Were you Dr. Lisicky's mistress?'

'Yes.'

'I want details about that. I want Nurse Cardew to hear from your own lips the full particulars of your affaire with the Doctor, and how, having first taken, and then neglected you, he took you back again to spite Owen Gruffydd. You had better tell the whole story as you told it to me that day in the summerhouse; with any additional details which may show how badly the Doctor treated you.'

It all came out in about twenty minutes' monotonous monologue; and when she had done Sally expressed herself as entirely satisfied that I had put no part of it into Deb's mind; her story included things that I couldn't have known, and it branded Helmuth as both a sadistic brute and outrageous liar.

I turned back to Deb and asked her, purely out of curiosity: 'Why did you seek to protect the Doctor before I put you in a trance? Why didn't you tell us the truth then?'

'Before I left he told me that I was never to mention that I had had an affair with him to anyone. And that if I was ever asked, I was to deny it.'

'But as you were leaving anyhow, he could no longer hold the threat of dismissal over you; so why should you take orders from him? Was it because you were afraid that he might tell Owen Gruffydd something about you that you did not want Gruffydd to know?'

'No. It was because I should have been severely punished if he found out that I had disobeyed him.'

'Who by?'

'By the Party.'

I drew in my breath. 'Do you mean then that Dr. Lisicky is also a Communist, and a member of the Party?'

'Of course, and a very high one. He is a Commissar.'

Sally and I took a swift look at one another. The reply had electrified us both. Later, I realised that I should have considered the possibility of Helmuth being a member of the Communist Party before. Deb had disclosed that Miss Smith, who ran her nursing organisation, used it as cover for a Communist centre, and Helmuth had told me himself that Miss Smith was an old friend of his hence his pull with her to send him not only good looking, complaisant nurses, but ones who were also 'trustworthy'. The tie-up was pretty clear, and I ought to have spotted it. By 'trustworthy' it was now clear, too, that he had meant girls who were members of the Party, whom he could order around, and who would keep their mouths shut if they suspected him of the filthy game he was playing on me. What a heaven sent blessing that Miss Smith should have gone off for the weekend and the nurse she had selected to replace Deb had injured her ankle, so that dear Sally was sent instead!

But Helmuth a Commissar! I would never have suspected that.

And what a field of speculation it opened up about the real activities of the Brotherhood!

When I had had a moment to recover from the bombshell that Deb had so unwittingly thrown, I said to her:

'Did you ever hear anything about occult forces being used by members of the Party to gain their political ends?"

'We are taught to use whatever means we regard as most suitable,' she replied. 'In some cases people who are interested in the occult can be led on through it to do things which they would not like others to know; then they can easily be blackmailed into doing as we wish.'

'But have you ever known a member of the Party actually to practise Black Magic himself?' I asked. 'I mean, one who cast spells, and used incantations to call up evil entities from the other world to help him in his work?'

'Only Dr. Lisicky,' came the toneless answer. 'He did not tell me very much about it. But I know that the reason he would not allow your blackout curtain to be lengthened, in the room downstairs, was so that the moonlight could continue to show under it. He needed the moonlight as a path for something to come into your room.'

I looked at Sally again, and I knew that as far as she was concerned I now had Helmuth completely in the bag.

Under hypnotic influence Deb had done her stuff, and more; so I woke her and reassured her that I would say nothing to Owen Gruffydd. Then Sally took her downstairs and got rid of her.

When Sally came back she could not have been more generous about not having believed me before; and for a little time I allowed myself the luxury of basking in her sweet sympathy about this ghastly time I have been through. But there is only tonight before Helmuth gets back, so we soon got down to brass tacks and started planning our getaway.

She was all against my idea for getting the wheelchair down the staircase, as she said it would be much too great a strain and might do me serious injury, even if I didn't collapse before we reached the bottom. But after a bit she thought of a better idea.