The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,57
awful. Its eyes are black and gleam like a serpent, the mouth is a kind of V-shape with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to, oh, quiver and pulsate, and the monster or whatever it is can hardly move, it seems weighed down by...possibly gravity or something, the thing’s...rising up now, and the crowd falls back now, they’ve seen plenty. Oh, uh, this is the most extraordinary experience, ladies and gentlemen. I can’t find words.... Well, I’ll pull this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop the description until I can take a new position. Hold on, will you please, I’ll be right back in a minute....”
Brief dead silence was followed by a gentle waterfall of tinkling piano.
“So,” Rusty managed, “was I lyin’?”
“I better call ol’ Flannel Mouth,” the corporal said.
That nickname—whispered in select company only—referred to their much unloved lieutenant, who lived close-by.
“You better call Flannel Mouth is right, Corporal Stevens—you better right away!”
The corporal frowned and gestured dismissively. “Get back to your post! See what’s coming over the teletype about this thing!”
By the time a real Princeton professor—Arthur Barrington, Geology Department head, behind the wheel of his dark blue Chevrolet sedan—rolled into Grovers Mill, one might think police cars and other emergency vehicles, plus emissaries of the press (including rival radio stations), would be wall-to-wall in the tiny town.
But as student Press Club member Sheldon Judcroft, leaning out the front seat rider’s side window, reported, nothing much seemed to be cooking.
Even for a bump in the road, Grovers Mill was quiet. An old clapboard mill and a feedstore—no gas station or lunchroom or even bar—made up the entire “downtown.” A scattering of houses nearby represented the village itself. There wasn’t even a street lamp.
Professor Barrington, sitting up and peering out into a slightly foggy night, said, “See what the nearest town is, Sheldon.”
As assigned navigator, the student had charge of the map and was using a flashlight from the glove compartment.
“Cranbury, sir,” Sheldon said. “Just five miles.”
The boy pointed toward a road sign.
The professor—the real professor—nodded and drove.
Back at the Columbia Broadcasting Building, Walter Gibson remained unaware of the invasion’s impact on some of its listeners. He had a murder to try to solve, and an hour to do it in.
The speaker in the twentieth-floor lobby was sharing the latest fake broadcast: “We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what’s happening on the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”
As the program returned to gentle fingering of piano keys, Gibson pressed the button for the elevator.
“We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grovers Mill.”
The elevator car arrived and the writer rode down to the seventeenth floor, where yet another security guard—Fred—had seen neither Virginia Welles nor George Balanchine, nor the alley-thug trio. And if Fred had seen Dolores Donovan around, boy, he’d’ve remembered it, a dish like that.
Gibson did not bother speaking to any of the newspeople on seventeen, because they were either on the air or bustling around reading teletypes and making phone calls and typing up stories, much like a newspaper office.
Anyway, he had the immediate sense that in this building, the world of news and that of entertainment, several floors up, were twains that never met.
On the elevator he asked the same questions of the elevator operator, Leo, that featherweight “boy” pushing sixty who seemed to worship Welles.
As they spoke, the elevator car stayed on the seventeenth floor. Leo didn’t mind if Gibson had a Camel; in fact, Leo took the occasion to smoke a Chesterfield. Hey, it was Sunday night. Traffic was light.
Leo knew who Mrs. Welles was, didn’t think he’d seen her today; but then there was another elevator (self-service, for the ambitious), and a service one, too. So that meant next to nothing.
Floundering, Gibson said, “What did you mean, by you don’t think you saw Mrs. Welles?...”
“Well...I, uh...well...”
Gibson figured this stall for a prompt, and showed Leo a couple of bucks to prime the pump.
But Leo was damn near offended. “I don’t want your money, sir. Any friend of Mr. Welles is a friend of mine. But—there was a lady who could’ve been Mrs. Welles.”
“Could?”
“Yeah, well—she was in a coat and a scarf and sunglasses, and she kept her back to me.”
“Like she didn’t want to be recognized?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”
“When was this?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe an hour ago? Half hour? Forty-five minutes, maybe—I don’t keep close track. I just go up and down.”
“Thanks, Leo. Thanks. Listen, can you take me to see the janitor?”