The War of the Worlds Murder (20 page)

“The Mercury show,” Williams was explaining. “Kinda dull—please don’t tell Mr. Welles I said so!”

“I won’t, Mr. Williams. I won’t.”

“About these people?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you check with George? He’s on the floor just above us.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And Fred’s down on seventeen—the news bureau?”

“Thanks. Any other security on duty?”

“No, sir. That’s it.”

As Gibson was getting on the elevator, a fake news flash kicked in.

In Studio One, Dan Seymour had just reported a request from the Government Meteorological Bureau that the nation’s observatories keep a watch on “any further disturbances” on Mars. Shortly, listeners would be taken to the Princeton Observatory in New Jersey where “noted astronomer” Professor Pierson would give an expert assessment of the situation.

“We return you until then,” the announcer said, “to the music of Ramón Raquello and his orchestra....”

In Lambertville, New Jersey, Miss Jane Dorn, 57, and her sister Miss Eleanor Dorn, 54, returned from an evening church service to their small house, inherited by them jointly from their minister father, a Baptist.

The two women had never worked for a living, sharing a modest but secure income from investments their late father had made during a lifetime of service and sacrifice. Both were chiefly interested in their Bible studies and baking pies for themselves and church bake sales; neither had ever had a serious beau—they had also inherited their father’s looks, which is to say, hawkish, pinched countenances, poor eyesight necessitating thick-lensed glasses, and odd lanky yet thick-hipped frames.

In small-town America of the thirties, the Dorn sisters of Lambertville were considered “old maids,” a term not terribly pejorative then; but the sisters considered themselves godly women doing the Lord’s work—which, again, consisted primarily of Bible studies and pie baking (and eating).

The two had only grammar school educations, but considered themselves serious-minded. They both did a great deal
of reading, Miss Jane partial to biographies of great men like Martin Luther and Abraham Lincoln, while Miss Eleanor was a devotee of the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen. When they decided to buy a radio console for their living room, the sisters agreed they would restrict their listening to religious and educational programming, though they had become quietly addicted to radio serials, in particular
Mary Noble, Backstage Wife
and
One Man’s Family
. This penchant for soap opera was the closest thing to a vice in the shared life of the sisters.

So it was, when they returned from Sunday evening service, that Miss Jane switched the radio on to an interview-in-progress, with Professor Richard Pierson.

This seemed to fill the educational requirement they still pretended to honor (none of their “stories” were on at the moment), so the sisters settled into twin rockers and began their knitting while, without a word to each other, they both became enthralled with the scientific discourse, which was accompanied by the hypnotically compelling sound of a ticking clock.

The reporter, Carl Phillips, described the scene vividly: Professor Pierson stood on a small platform, peering through a huge microscope in a large semicircular room, “pitch black but for an oblong split in the ceiling.” Through that opening, stars could be seen. Mr. Phillips warned listeners that the interview might be interrupted at any moment, as Professor Pierson was in constant communication with astronomical centers around the world.

“Professor, would you please tell our radio audience exactly what you see as you observe Mars through your telescope?”

“Nothing unusual at the moment, Mr. Phillips. A red disk swimming in a blue sea. Transverse stripes across the disk. Quite distinct now, because Mars happens to be the point nearest the earth...in opposition, as we call it.”

“In your opinion, what do these transverse stripes signify, Professor Pierson?”

“Not canals, I assure you, Mr. Phillips.”

The sisters smiled to themselves as the professor assured the reporter that, despite “popular conjecture,” the possibility of intelligent life on Mars was “a thousand to one.”

Miss Jane said, “God’s in His Heaven.”

Miss Eleanor said, “And all’s right in the world.”

This exchange was a common one between the sisters; but right now, with all this talk of Mars and the heavens, it seemed particularly apt.

Walter Gibson tried George, the security guard on the twenty-first floor.

The heavyset, florid man was leaning back in his swivel chair behind the reception desk asleep and snoring, when Gibson approached and cleared his throat.

George’s eyes popped open and he lurched forward. “Yes! Yes!”

Only the fact that he was investigating a murder kept Gibson from laughing.

He introduced himself and explained to the security guard that he was trying to ascertain whether or not anyone had seen Virginia Welles or George Balanchine around the building today—and if so, when? How recently?

George knew who Mrs. Welles was, but hadn’t seen her; he just shook his head when Gibson shared Balanchine’s description with him. The same response came when Gibson asked about the three thugs from last night.

“Like I say,” George said, “I haven’t seen Mrs. Welles today. I’ve been on this desk since Sadie, the receptionist, left at
five
P.M.
Before that, I was in the security office on the eighteenth. I’ve got Sadie’s phone number—you could call her.”

Gibson took the number, writing it down in the notebook he carried to record plot brainstorms and to write descriptions of people and places he happened upon.

The “War of the Worlds” broadcast was piped in onto this floor, too—right now the two Shadows were in a scene together, Shadow-Number-One Frank Readick playing a reporter asking Shadow-Number-Two Orson Welles various questions about Mars.

“Professor, for the benefit of our listeners, how far is it from Mars to Earth?”

“Approximately forty million miles.”

“Well, that seems a safe enough distance.”

The security guard was shaking his head. “Mr. Gibson, I’m sure I haven’t seen this Balanchine character, or those hoodlum types, neither.”

“Why so sure, George?”

George shrugged. “First of all, I haven’t seen anybody this evening who I don’t recognize as one of the actors or other production personnel, on one show around here or another. And second...” Another shrug. “... I would’ve stopped anybody I didn’t recognize. Mr. Gibson, nothing gets past me.”

Gibson nodded. “Thank you, George.”

George grinned and nodded.

Gibson stepped back onto the elevator, wondering how long it would be before George was asleep again.

In upstate New York, at the state troopers’ HQ, Rusty was puffing away, his corncob pipe pluming like a tugboat smokestack.

On the radio, reporter Carl Phillips was reading the listeners an urgent telegram that had just arrived for Professor Pierson at Princeton Observatory.

“ ‘Nine-fifteen p.m. eastern standard time. Seismograph registered shock of almost earthquake intensity occurring within a radius of twenty miles of Princeton. Please investigate. Signed, Lloyd Gray, Chief of Astronomical Division.’ ”

Frowning at the word “earthquake,” which echoed his earlier fears about his parents in New Jersey, Rusty turned the volume dial up on the radio, even louder.

The professor was confirming that this meteorite was of an “unusual size,” and that the disturbances on Mars had no bearing on the event—it was merely coincidental.

“However,”
the professor was saying, “
we shall conduct a search
....”

Rusty wondered if he should notify the corporal, who was at the duty desk, two floors below, particularly when the next bulletin reported “a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite,” falling on a farm near Grovers Mill, not far from Trenton.

The flash in the sky (the radio said) could be seen within a radius of hundreds of miles, the impact heard as far north as Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Somehow, when the reporter turned the air back over to the New York studio, where a pianist was tinkling away at “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,” Rusty was even more convinced something was wrong,
really
wrong....

Thinking about his folks, the teletype trooper began to tremble; his eyes teared up, and it wasn’t from the smoke his corncob pipe was producing.

He would tell the duty corporal to turn on the radio and hear for himself. Who knew? They might need to start mobilizing, to help the New Jersey troopers out, any time now.

Slight, spectacled Sheldon Judcroft, a student member of the University Press Club at Princeton, was at a desk in the student newspaper office, working on an editorial protesting the radical-right radio preachings of Father Coughlin, preferring the quiet here to the hubbub of his fraternity.

The phone rang and something amazing happened: the city desk editor of a real newspaper, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, was on the line.

“We have a radio report of a meteorite that has hit near Princeton,” the voice said (male, urgent, yet matter-of-fact). “Place called Grovers Mill. What do you know about it?”

“Nothing—I don’t even have the radio on.”

“Oh. Okay.”

And the phone clicked dead.

Sheldon thought about the call. He felt he’d somehow failed to measure up, faced with a real newspaper story. He turned on the radio and switched the dial until he found the report and listened.

Indeed, a meteor did seem to have struck in New Jersey, a big one that had been heard for miles around (though, oddly, Sheldon hadn’t heard it himself, nor felt the impact...too wrapped up in the Father Coughlin piece, maybe).

Then something else amazing happened: Sheldon found himself calling Arthur Barrington, Chair of the Princeton Geology Department, at home.

After Sheldon’s apologies and explanation, the Department Chair said, “I haven’t heard anything about this either, son...but it sounds big.”

“Yes it does, sir.”

“Mr. Judcroft, are you by nature adventurous?”

“Of course,” Sheldon squeaked. “I’m a newsman!”

“Good. I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

“Pick me up?”

“If ever there was a job for journalism and geology, this is it.... Put on something warm.”

“Yes, sir!”

Sheldon hung up, and got his notebook.

And a sweater.

At 8:12
P.M.,
Edgar Bergen turned his microphone over to a guest artist, Nelson Eddy.

The host of
The Chase and Sanborn Hour
—thanks to the vocal gymnastics required to keep such characters as Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd and Effie Clinker as vivid and real as himself (more so, some would say)—needed a nice break after each week’s opening monologue, which he and Charlie (which is to say, Bergen himself) did alone.

So tonight, while Bergen sipped a glass of water, Eddy—singing star of radio and film—began to warble “Neapolitan Love Song.”

Bergen felt confident about this booking—Eddy, half of a wildly popular screen team (the other half, of course, was Jeanette MacDonald), would surely keep listeners rapt at their radios. The singer seemed a fine preventative, if not cure, for that spreading disease of dial-turning (pushbuttons and airplane dials made it so easy!) that especially plagued a rigidly formatted show like Bergen and McCarthy. Listeners knew just how long they could sample the wares of other stations, before returning for the next dose of humor from the ventriloquist
and his dummy—unless, of course, some other show caught the dial-turner’s attention and held it....

Still, Bergen figured he didn’t have much to worry about. In addition to Eddy, he had Madeline Carroll and Dorothy Lamour, two top actresses, and Dottie Lamour would sing several of her biggest hits.

So even in the unlikely event that Eddy lost a listener, momentarily, that listener would be back.

After all, who would want to miss out on all that excitement?

CHAPTER SEVEN

JOURNEY INTO FEAR

A
T 8:11 P.M.,
E.S.T.,
IN
Studio One, Bernard Herrmann’s undistinctive dance-band music was interrupted by announcer Kenny Delmar, saying: “We take you now to Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”

After a long, rather ominous beat, the sound of the remote location kicked in, as all of the actors, on their feet, circling about a single microphone like Indians around a campfire of war, created a convincing aural approximation of a much larger, milling crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Frank Readick said into another mike, reading from his script, “this is Carl Phillips again, out at the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Professor Pierson and myself made the eleven miles from Princeton in ten minutes.”

Ora Nichols had already dropped the needle on a disc that layered police sirens and the sound of wind into background of the “Carl Phillips” remote report.

Readick, as Phillips, was describing the scene as being like something out of a modern Arabian Nights.