The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,56

wouldn’t mind. “Sounds like an adventure,” he said.

But then, when the radio announcer said that he and the Princeton professor had travelled eleven miles in ten minutes, Dennis sat forward in his armchair and said to his wife Helen, “That wasn’t any ten minutes, was it? They were just on!”

Helen said, “It’s hard to keep track of time, but...you might be right.”

“It was ten minutes,” Amy said. “Wasn’t it, Earl?”

Earl wasn’t sure.

Dennis said, “Anyway, with all these news flashes, the streets around Princeton would be packed—they couldn’t get there that fast, even if it was ten minutes!”

Helen, frowning in thought, suggested, “Why don’t you check the listings, in the paper?”

Dennis snapped his fingers. “Good idea, honey.”

The husband went to the kitchen where the Sunday Daily News lay on a counter, waiting to wrap garbage. He shuffled through to the radio listings and found that CBS was offering The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s presentation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds at eight P.M.

Chuckling to himself, he returned to the tiny living room, settled back in his armchair and said to all assembled, “It’s just a silly play! What knuckleheads we are—shall we switch back to Charlie McCarthy?”

“No!” Helen said. “If it could fool us like that, then it’s well done. Let’s keep listening!”

Everybody agreed that was a good idea, so they indeed kept listening, and really enjoyed the show, laughing heartily at times, little Douglas smilingly shrieking with safe fear.

But the Chapmans (with the notable exception of young Leroy) were legitimately terrified.

Carl Phillips’s excited voice crackled out of the console:

“... do you still think it’s a meteor, Professor?”

“I don’t know what to think. The, uh, metal casing is definitely extraterrestrial...uh, not found on this earth. Friction with the earth’s atmosphere usually tears holes in a meteorite. This thing is...smooth and, as you can see, of cylindrical shape...”

Leroy said nothing.

But in his mind, hearing Professor Pierson’s voice, the boy heard himself scream: “That...is...the...Shadow!”

His little sister was hugging Les, shivering with fear, and Les looked pretty scared, himself.

Normally, Leroy would’ve been sympathetic. He loved his siblings, though the three had the usual kid squabbles. But right now, he relished their discomfort.

“Just a minute!” the announcer yelled. “Something’s happening! Ladies and gentlemen, this is terrific! This...end of the thing is beginning to...flake off. The top is beginning to rotate like a screw, and the thing must be hollow...”

And Leroy laughed out loud—a deep laugh, in imitation of his favorite radio avenger.

Grandfather stood, went over and lifted the boy up by the arm and swatted his blue-jeaned bottom.

But Leroy only smiled.

Like the Shadow, Leroy knew.

Rusty, at his desk at State Troopers’ HQ in upstate New York, sat in gaping astonishment as the words tumbled out of his radio. Upstairs, against his better judgment, Rusty’s no-nonsense duty corporal, Richard Stevens, had switched his radio on, too, and was listening.

And now Corporal Stevens was sitting at his desk with the same wide-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment as that dope Rusty.

Both troopers, seated before their respective radios, watched the little talking boxes as if they could see the images reporter Carl Phillips was describing, and indeed on the movie screens of their minds, they could.

And then a succession of overlapping, agitated voices jumped out:

“She’s movin’!”

“...darn thing’s unscrewing!”

“Stand back, there! Keep those men back, I tell you!”

“It’s red hot, they’ll burn to a cinder!”

“Keep back there. Keep those idiots back!”

Then—a hollow metallic clunk.

“She’s off! The top’s loose!”

“Look out there! Stand back!”

That was all Rusty needed to hear.

He ran up the two floors, corncob pipe tight in his teeth, and leaned in the doorway, from which he saw the normally cool-calm-collected duty corporal standing at his desk, staring at the radio, looking like a wild man.

And then the announcer was back: “Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top, someone or...some thing. I can see...peering out of that black hole two luminous disks...Are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be almost anything...”

The corporal looked toward Rusty and the expressions of the two men mirrored fear and astonishment, matching the outburst of awe from the crowd at the scene.

Phillips was saying, “Something wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one, and an...another one, and another one.... They look like tentacles to me. I, I can see the thing’s body now, it’s large, it’s large as a bear—glistens like wet leather, but that, that face, it, it.... Ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable.”

Rusty crossed himself.

“I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so