Curtain Of Fear

CURTAIN OF FEAR.

by DENNIS WHEATLEY.

For my friend of many years.

THE RT. REVEREND.

CYRIL EASTAUGH, M.C.

Lord Bishop of Kensington.

Most affectionately.

Introduction.

Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy"s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sall.u.s.t and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sall.u.s.t stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

He is probably always going to be a.s.sociated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it"s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it"s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read "all his books".

Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were d.i.c.kensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sall.u.s.t was one of James Bond"s precursors.

The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I"m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

Dominic Wheatley, 2013.

CHAPTER I.

"THE PATH OF TRUE LOVE ..."

"What about a little kiss from my teacher?" said Wendy with a smile.

"Come right up to the top of the cla.s.s, darling," Nicky smiled back.

The door of the cla.s.s-room had barely closed before her arms were round his neck. She was a senior student and he a junior professor at Birmingham University. About three minutes had elapsed since he had finished his morning lecture. During them they had both made an impatient pretence of packing up their notes and books until the other students had left the room. At last they were free to s.n.a.t.c.h a few moments" bliss together.

For a dozen heart-beats they stood tightly embraced, then drew apart to smile into one another"s eyes. Wendy Stevenson was twenty-two, a well-built athletic-looking girl with dark curly hair, a straight nose, rather full cheeks and a generous mouth. Nicholas Novk was thirty, tallish, with a slight stoop, red-headed and so thin-faced as to be almost cadaverous, but his lively brown eyes gave his face charm and strong personality.

A glance at their clothes was enough to indicate their very different backgrounds.

As it was May and a sunny day, she had put on a gaily-coloured print frock. It was new and she would not have worn it for any other Professor"s cla.s.s that Friday morning; but her bag, shoes and the small attache case which contained her sandwich lunch all spoke of ample money. Her father was a rich manufacturer and she lived with her parents in a big house with a pleasant garden out at Solihull.

He was wearing an old tweed jacket, baggy grey flannel trousers and a dark blue shirt. His tie was a rag, his shoes needed re-heeling, and the satchel into which his packet of sandwiches was stuffed with his books was gaping at the seams. This seediness about his things was not altogether due to the carelessness of appearance common among intellectuals, as when new they had been cheap and shoddy. His father had been a Czech commercial traveller who had married an English girl and taken British nationality shortly after the First World War. Both had been killed by a flying bomb in 1944 and, from the age of twenty-one, Nicholas had been left to fend for himself with very little money.

This was the second term that Wendy had sat as one of Nicholas" students in Political Economics. From the beginning she had admired his quick, vital manner and fine intellect; while he had soon, rather grudgingly, admitted to himself that for a spoilt little rich girl she showed unusual promise as a student; but their real "discovery" of one another was much more recent. They had been drawn as partners in the mixed doubles for the first tournament of the year at the University Tennis Club. She had asked him out to her home to practise and, with the suddenness of blossom bursting on a warm day in spring, their acquaintance had become a pa.s.sionate yearning for one another.

Wendy had philandered happily with half a dozen young men in her own wealthy set, but this was her first serious affair. She felt to the very bottom of her being that Nicky was the only man she could ever possibly marry. Never having had to bother about money, she did not do so now. Imperiously she had swept aside Nicky"s uneasy admission that he could not afford to get married. For her it was enough that with his brilliant gifts he was certain to go to the top of the tree. In the meantime, her father would provide; or, should he refuse, that would be a challenge to her love which she would readily accept, as in her ignorance of living meanly the prospect of life with Nicky in a tiny flat appeared to offer all the delights of a gay adventure.

Nicholas, too, had never before had a serious affair. His struggle to achieve professorship without money or influence had begotten in him a bitter cla.s.s hatred; he loathed and despised what were loosely termed the "idle rich". Yet he was fastidious by nature and had acquired an illogical sn.o.bbishness about women which had, up till now, made him reject any permanent a.s.sociation with such girls as had been within his reach. On the few occasions when his loneliness had caused him temporarily to succ.u.mb he had afterwards despised himself; yet he despised himself still more for secretly hankering after the beautifully-turned-out daughters of the rich, whom he thought of as spoilt and empty-headed. But Wendy had carried him off his feet. She was neither idle nor foolish, but everything he had ever longed for. That she should return his love still seemed to him a miracle. He knew that to marry her on his income would be madness, and his every instinct revolted against accepting help from her father; but, all the same, a week before he had put all his scruples behind him and they had become secretly engaged.

They thought it a foregone conclusion that her parents would oppose the match, as Novk was very far from being the type of man the Stevensons would have chosen as a son-in-law; but neither of the love-bemused couple was unduly worried about that. Wendy had a fine chin and a will that went with it; while Nicholas at least had prospects and, although he remained adamant about becoming what he termed a "parasite", had been persuaded to agree that it would be unreasonable to insist on Wendy"s refusing a handsome increase in her dress allowance. In consequence they were confident that now Nicholas was prepared to forgo any attempt to make his young wife entirely dependent on him in near poverty, consent could be won after a display of sufficient persistence.

Yet one thing secretly troubled them; it was their diametrically opposed views on politics. As a professor and a student of Political Economics, both of them took all questions of government and ideologies with extreme seriousness. Unhappily, he was as Red as any Leftist could be, while by upbringing and conviction she was a True-Blue Tory.

During the early stages of their acquaintance they had found it a fascinating game to argue their differences. Wendy, whose earnestness was leavened with a sense of humour, had had a lot of fun seeing him get hot under the collar when she shrewdly quoted examples of the incompetence the Socialists had displayed while in office; and Nicholas had felt a pleasant sense of elation whenever he had forced her to admit one or other of the barbarous circ.u.mstances in which the governments of the rich had for many generations compelled the poor to sc.r.a.pe a living. But now that they were eager to marry, these differences of outlook had become like hideous insects gnawing at the core of their happiness.

Each time he came to her home she was fearful that he might give free reign to his boundless admiration for Mr. Aneurin Bevan-whose very name was anathema to her father; while on these visits he sometimes went white with the strain of holding his tongue when her family spoke with love and admiration of the man he always thought of as "that deceitful, imperialist warmonger, Churchill".

Pa.s.sionately as they were drawn to one another, honestly as they admired each other"s minds and characters, determined as they were to exercise every possible restraint where their political feelings were concerned, both of them were horribly conscious that this was the one rock upon which their love might founder. And a crisis that held all the ingredients for bringing about such a wreck was far more imminent than either of them imagined.

They had been talking, in half breathless s.n.a.t.c.hes between kisses, for only a few minutes when Wendy said: "Darling, I"ve got an awful ch.o.r.e for you. I know you"ll hate it, but will do it for my sake and be on your best behaviour."

He smiled at her. "Of course I will. What is it?"

"I"ve fixed up for us to stay the weekend after this with Aunt Agatha," she replied a little hurriedly.

His sudden frown did not surprise her. Aunt Agatha was her mother"s sister, and the widow of Colonel the Honourable George Lis-Hartley. She had been left extremely well off and lived in almost pre-war luxury at Lis Court, a fine old Georgian manor in Shropshire. She entertained lavishly, ruled her estate despotically, and still rode to hounds enthusiastically at the age of fifty-eight. In fact she represented everything that Nicholas most heartily condemned.

"Now don"t be difficult, my sweet," Wendy hurried on before he could reply. "As you are going to marry me you"ll have to meet her some time, and the sooner you get it over the better. You really must get it out of your head that everyone who has a t.i.tle or a lot of money is necessarily horrid."

"I never said they were."

"But you are inclined to think it, aren"t you? Anyway, Aunt Agatha is a dear. She"s fat and jolly and awfully kind."

"If you say so I"m sure she is, darling; but all the same I can"t accept her invitation."

"Oh, Nicky! But you must. As I was telling you the other night, I"m her only niece, she"s awfully fond of me and has made me her heir; so it would be not only stupid but most unkind to offend her. You really needn"t be nervous about staying at Lis Court, or about the people you"ll meet there. I know you haven"t got a dinner jacket, but you could easily hire one, and ..."

"Thanks!" He cut her short with an edge on his voice. "I don"t need to wear their absurd livery to hold my own with a bunch of sn.o.bs." But he added quickly, "Sorry, darling! I didn"t mean that. I haven"t yet got used to thinking of such people as your friends; and I"d willingly dress myself up, even as Punchinello, to please you. It isn"t my ingrained dislike of all that your amiable aunt represents that makes me say no, either."

"What is it, then?"

He hesitated a second, angry with himself now at having put off telling her before, because he felt certain that his intention would displease her; then he blurted out: "Next weekend I have to attend a conference of the new I.L.P. at Llandudno."

Her brown eyes opened wider. She was aware that he contributed articles to several Left-wing journals, but had not known that he took an active part in extremist politics; so she asked: "Do you often attend such meetings, Nicky?"

"No," he shrugged. "Only those that I think may be of particular interest."

"Then surely, as it is to please me, you wouldn"t mind terribly not going to this one?"

"I"m afraid I must. You see, it has been specially called to discuss a matter of major policy, and some of my friends who will be there are counting on my support. I"m sorry, darling. Really I am. I"ll come to your aunt"s any other week-end you like, and I"ll be as good as gold about hiding my red light under a bushel."

Dropping her eyes she murmured, "All right, then. I suppose it can"t be helped. I"ll make some suitable excuse to Aunt Agatha."

After a moment"s awkward pause, he plucked up the courage to say, "I"m afraid I"ve got another disappointment for you, sweetheart. I"ve had to scratch our game in the tennis doubles for to-morrow."

She looked up quickly. "Oh, Nicky, why?"

"My cousin telephoned me last night."

"Your cousin! I thought your only relatives lived in Czechoslovakia."

"They do, except for Bilto. I"ve seen very little of him during the past few years, and I suppose that"s why it never occurred to me to mention him to you. He came here as a refugee soon after Hitler marched into Prague. As he is a very able scientist he has done quite well for himself. During most of the war he was employed on atomic research in Canada and the States, and he now holds a senior appointment at Harwell. Anyhow, he rang me up to say that he wanted to see me urgently on an important family matter, so I promised to meet him in London tonight. In the circ.u.mstances, I couldn"t possibly refuse."

"No, I quite see that," Wendy agreed. "But if you are seeing him to-night, what is to stop you catching a train back to-morrow morning? Even quite a late one would get you here in time for our match."

Nicholas shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, then he said uneasily, "Darling, I"m afraid you are going to be awfully annoyed with me, but I"ve committed myself for the whole weekend. You remember I told you about this new economic monthly that Igor Sinznick is planning to start. He has been urging me for the past three weeks to go up and have a really long talk with him about it, but I"ve kept putting it off because of us. I can"t afford trips to London often, and since I"ve got to go up to see Bilto anyhow, this seemed the perfect opportunity. The Sinznicks can always give me a bed at their house in Cricklewood, so I wired Igor this morning, saying that I"d arrive late to-night, and would stay over with them till Sunday evening. I had no chance to discuss the matter with you, and when I sent off my wire to Igor I didn"t think you"d really mind."

"But I do mind!" Wendy took a swift pace back from him and her mouth became a firm, angry line.

"Oh come, my sweet!" he protested. "You have to go to a party to which I am not invited on Sat.u.r.day night, and as Sunday is your grandfather"s birthday you are tied up for dinner that night as well. It is unreasonable to expect me to forgo this chance of spending the weekend with one of my oldest friends just to be with you for a few hours on a tennis court."

"It"s not that!" she flared. "It is that you are going back on your word. When we became engaged we solemnly agreed that we would not allow politics to interfere with our private lives."

"Yes, that"s what we agreed; and I stand by what I said."

"How can you say that, when you have just refused to come to Aunt Agatha"s next weekend because you want to attend a conference of the Independent Labour Party, and this weekend you are scratching our match in order to stay up in London for the purpose of planning the issue of some filthy red rag with a Communist agitator?"

Two crimson spots appeared in Nicholas" lean cheeks, as he snapped, "Igor may be an agitator, if by that you mean a man who has the courage to speak openly in defence of the downtrodden ma.s.ses, but he is not a member of the Communist Party, and I resent your stigmatising our honest project to expose capitalist abuses in a new periodical by terming it a filthy rag."

"All right, then I resent it if you like; but I refuse to be treated like this. If we are to make a success of our marriage, from now on you must give your political activities second place to our life together."

"Wendy, my work is not for myself but for others; so I cannot give it up. But I swear to you that I"ll do my best to honour our agreement."

"Very well. Meet me half way, then. Either come to Aunt Agatha"s next weekend or get back here to-morrow in time for the match."

"d.a.m.n it, I can"t," he cried in sudden exasperation. "I am already committed for this weekend and next."

She was very near to tears as she stammered, "I think you"re horrid. I"d ... I"d have half a mind to give you back your ring, if ...if your head had not been too full of your beastly politics for you to think of giving me one."

"I"m sorry about that," he said contritely. "I meant to but I"ve had little chance. I"ll get you one while I"m in London and give it to you on Monday."

"I may not feel like accepting it," she retorted angrily. "Stay up in London if you like, but while you are there you had better think things over. If by Monday you have not decided to meet me half way and come to Aunt Agatha"s, I shall consider our engagement at an end."

"Wendy, please!" He held out his arms to her, but she evaded his embrace, turned on her heel, stalked swiftly to the door, wrenched it open and slammed it furiously behind her.

It was not until she was half way down the corridor that she realised that she had forgotten to s.n.a.t.c.h up the attache case that held her sandwiches. Nothing would have induced her to go back for them, and she felt in no state to face her fellow students in the canteen. The prospect of a lunchless interval added further fuel to her anger, and during it she shed bitter tears in a quiet corner of the grounds. As she finally dried her eyes her resolution was taken. She had faced the fact that on this question time could be no healer. She must make her stand now, before she became further committed by publicly announcing her engagement. Desperately as she loved Nicky she must force herself to give him up unless, on his return from London, he was prepared to put her happiness before his other interests.

CHAPTER II.

THE ATOMIC SCIENTIST.

On his journey to London that evening Nicholas was a very worried man. One of the things he admired most about Wendy was her strength of character. She was not the sort of girl who could be cozened into meek submission by a display of tact and a little petting; and he had an uneasy feeling that she really meant what she had said. The thought that she might stand by her ultimatum appalled him, for he had never wanted anything so much in his life as he wanted her. Yet how could he possibly continue with what he had come to regard as his life"s work if he ceased to collaborate actively with the little group of people who thought as he did, and believed that given the power to do so they could remedy all social ills?

That d.a.m.nable problem had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since the wonderful evening when Wendy had first confessed her love for him. For the past fortnight his overwhelming joy in being with her and thinking of her had enabled him to put it out of his thoughts for the greater part of the time, but at unexpected moments it had kept popping up and he had known that sooner or later it must be faced.

Idealist as he was, Nicholas was by no means unconscious of the practical benefits which would accrue to him from marrying the rich Miss Stevenson. Apart from the delights and material comforts that a loving wife in any circ.u.mstances would bring him, now that he had agreed to let her accept the help that her doting father would almost certainly offer he could look forward to exchanging his dreary lodgings for a pleasant home. Entertaining on a modest scale would not be beyond them, and Wendy already had her own little car. Once the Stevensons were reconciled to the marriage they would probably insist on providing the means for the young couple to take pleasant holidays-perhaps even trips abroad-and if there were children it was certain that old man Stevenson would make himself responsible for seeing that they had the best education money could provide.

As Nicholas had thought of all these things he had suffered certain qualms of conscience, recalling uneasily his own past diatribes against "worthless parasites who battened on the rich"; but he had succeeded in persuading himself that provided he did not use any of the "tainted" money for personal ends he need not reproach himself. That he could not avoid benefitting from it indirectly was inescapable, but against that he set the argument that it would be little short of brutal to compel a girl who had had Wendy"s upbringing to sc.r.a.pe and slave when there was no necessity for her to do so. Moreover, he considered himself far from worthless, and further placated his scruples by the somewhat cynical reasoning that marrying a girl with money must result in his having far more free time which could be devoted to his political work.

About that, too, he had, up till now, managed to lull himself into a false optimism. As a student Wendy had shown such promise that he had felt certain that with her good brain she could in due course be brought to see "the Light", abandon the shibboleths of her bourgeois antecedents and be moulded into his right-hand in the great crusade for internationalism and equality. Only in the past few days had he begun dimly to realise that her patriotism, fervid loyalty to the monarchy, and belief that the Socialists were incapable of governing the country in its best interests, were far more the fruit of her own reasoned convictions than habits of thought accepted instinctively from the world of comparative affluence and privilege in which she had always lived.

Another pleasing prospect that had taken shape in his imagination was that as a result of marrying Wendy he might hope for professional advancement. It so happened that her father and his immediate chief were friends of many years" standing, as they had been brother officers in the First World War. The latter, Professor Benjamin Salting-Sala, was regarded by Nicholas as a charlatan of the first water; and it was probably true that he owed his present position more to the connections he had made during half a lifetime spent at Oxford, and his flamboyant personality, than to his academic achievements. He was a fat, florid bon viveur with charming manners and a cynical wit that made him excellent company. Being a rabid anti-Socialist he lost no opportunity of using his occasional lectures as a vehicle for tilting with derisive mockery at the revolutionary tenets that Nicholas held most dear. Had they both lived in Paris in 1793 and Nicholas had been a crony of Robespierre"s, he would have seen to it that Salting Sala was given a specially high priority for a one-way trip to the guillotine; as things were, the corpulent, luxury-loving professor was far too occupied with his own concerns even to be conscious that the most intelligent but disreputable-looking of his juniors was not among his many admirers.

His blindness in this respect was now, in view of Nicholas" marriage prospects, particularly fortunate, for Salting-Sala was a power to be reckoned with in the University; and while he was too much of a sn.o.b to extend his patronage to a member of his staff whom he looked upon as his social inferior, all the odds were that, having no personal prejudice against Nicholas, he would readily do so to him, as John Stevenson"s son-in-law.

The thought that he might be about to achieve through favouritism the promotion which he had earned by merit, but was denied by lack of influence, was another that made Nicholas" conscience squirm. Yet again he had quieted it with the sophistry that the higher his standing in the academic world the greater would be the regard paid to his articles championing the rights of the toiling ma.s.ses.

In fact, during the past fortnight his mind had taken on an entirely new orientation. Almost unconsciously he had come to accept that Wendy would bring him not only married bliss but a new life of ease and comfort, and hitherto unhoped-for opportunities to become a more potent force in the political field.

But that morning he had been rudely awakened from this happy dream. She had made it unmistakably clear that their political views were utterly irreconcilable. He could still have her and the ease and comfort, but there was a price to be paid for those things. Not only had his cherished plan of making her his willing helpmate finally gone up in smoke; she was not even prepared to tolerate a continuance of his own activities on their present modest scale.

Despite his very human tendency to find plausible excuses for wandering from the straight and narrow path, Nicholas was at heart a man of great integrity. Desperately as he wanted Wendy for his wife, he knew that he could not have her on those terms.

As the train rumbled into Euston he made up his mind about that. On Monday he must tell her that he meant to adhere to the undertaking he had given his friends to attend the Conference of the resurrected I.L.P. the following weekend. That was, he knew, to risk that she might throw him over there and then, once and for all. That risk had to be taken; but there was at least a hope that she would give him another chance. If she did he would meet her wishes as far as he possibly could in the future, and by treating his political work as a thing apart, do his utmost to prevent it from interfering with their social life; but whatever happened he must continue his self-imposed task of writing and speaking on behalf of the helpless millions who were incapable of writing or speaking for themselves.