The War of the Worlds Murder (22 page)

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?”

“Sure. He’s on eighteen, right now. Fixing the men’s room. Name’s Louis. Him—he might take your money. In fact, I’d recommend offering it.”

“Thanks, Leo. Take me up a floor, would you?”

“That’s what they pay me for.”

The seventeenth-floor news center of the Columbia Broadcasting Building did not pipe in the network’s programming, so Gibson had not heard what so many others had—the Dorn sisters, for example.

The two sisters, seated in their rockers, having set their knitting aside, had with their own ears witnessed the opening foray of Armageddon.

“Ladies and gent...Am I on? Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, here I am, back of a stone wall that adjoins Mr. Wilmuth’s garden. From here I get a sweep of the whole scene. I’ll give you every detail as long as I can talk, and as long as I can see....”

Miss Jane reached bony fingers out to Miss Eleanor and the two sisters, still seated, held hands.

They listened mesmerized as reporter Carl Phillips told of more state police, a good thirty of them, arriving to cordon off the pit, but the crowd was staying back of its own volition now.

The captain of police was conferring with Professor Pierson, the astronomer from Princeton. Then the two men separated and the professor moved to one side, studying the object, while the police captain and two of his men approached, carrying a pole with a flag of truce.

“If those creatures know what that means...what anything means.... Wait a minute, something’s happening....”

Miss Jane squeezed Miss Eleanor’s hand and Miss Eleanor squeezed Miss Jane’s hand, as a terrible hissing turned into a diabolical hum that built and built and built....

“A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a...jet of flame springing from that mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord...they’re turning into flame!”

Terrible screams seemed to shake the radio.

The screams continued as Carl Phillips soldiered on, reporting,
“Now the whole field’s caught on fire, the woods, the barns, the...the gas tanks, tanks of automobiles, spreading everywhere, it’s coming this way. About twenty yards to my right—”

Dead silence.

The two sisters, as one, fell out of their chairs onto the floor and hugged each other, and began to pray silently, though their lips moved. Miss Jane’s prayer, in the sanctuary of her mind, went as follows: “God forgive me of my sins so that I will not be commited to eternal purgatory.” Miss Eleanor’s prayer was of a similar nature, though it included a private confession about touching herself in a sinful way (some years before—frequently, though).

Then the women froze as finally the awful silence was filled by an announcer’s voice, bright and almost cheerful as he said,
“Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grovers Mill. Evidently there’s some difficulty with our field transmission; however, we will return to that point at the earliest opportunity.”

The two sisters left their embrace to assume proper, prayerful kneeling positions, side by side but separate.

The announcer continued, all business as usual:
“In the meantime, we have a late bulletin from San Diego, California. Professor Indellkoffer, speaking at a dinner of the California Astronomical Society, expressed the opinion that the explosions on Mars are undoubtedly nothing more than severe volcanic disturbances on the surface of the planet.... We continue now with our piano interlude.”

And a piano, ever so sweetly, played “Clair de Lune.”

As for the Dorn sisters, they remained on the floor, as the broadcast continued: kneeling; praying; off their rockers.

No one at the informal dinner party in Tudor City was requesting radio reviewer Ben Gross’s permission to switch back to
The Chase and Sanborn Hour
.

Almost all dinner conversation had ceased.

Gross watched his wife and the other dinner guests as they seemed deeply if uneasily engrossed in the melodrama, which after a leisurely start of seemingly endless musical interludes had built in pace, a veritable cascade of sensational news “bulletins.”

During the frightening, effective device of cutting to dead silence, after the creatures rose from the pit, spreading fire across the landscape, no one touched their food (well-done roast beef being the main course).

But no one asked for the show to be switched off, either.

Then the announcer was back on with another realistic interruption:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grovers Mill by telephone. Just one moment, please.”

In the most crisp, convincing manner, the voice informed listeners that some forty people lay dead in a field east of Grovers Mill, including half a dozen state troopers—bodies burned beyond recognition.

“The next voice you hear will be that of Brigadier General Montgomery Smith, commander of the state militia at Trenton, New Jersey.”

A weary, somber voice took over: “
I have been requested by the governor of New Jersey to place the counties of Mercer and Middlesex as...as far west as Princeton, and, uh, east to Jamesburg, under martial law. No one will be permitted to enter this area except by special pass issued by state or military authorities. Four companies of state militia are proceeding from Trenton to Grovers Mill
,
and, uh, will aid in the evacuation of homes within the range of military operations.... Thank you
.”

“You know,” Gross said, rising from a half-consumed portion of roast beef, “I think I better be getting back to the office. Some listeners might really
believe this
....”

“How on earth could they?” his hostess asked. “They announced it was by H.G. Wells—that means it’s fiction!”

But his host said, “Dear, those who tuned in late didn’t hear the announcement.”

Gross turned to his wife. “What do you think, dear?”

“I think,” Kathleen said, “that’s the most realistic, scary program I ever heard—and you need to get back to the city room.”

He grinned at her, said, “Thanks, honey,” excused himself, and went down to hail a cab.

Grandfather Chapman called his son Luke at home.

“It’s an emergency,” he said. “Have you had the radio on this evening?”

“No. I was reading to Alice. She’s asleep, now....”

“Don’t wake her.”

“Dad, what is it?”

“You just get over here. Bring your shotgun.”

“You make it sound like we’re being invaded!”

“We are.”

“...What the hell—the Germans?”

“Just get over here.”

James Roberts, Jr., and his friend Bobby, had heard every moment of the broadcast on the Buick coupe’s car radio.

At first the news coverage of the fallen meteor had been exciting, and James had said, “Jeez, Bobby, CBS News is really tops, aren’t they? They’ve got people on the spot, for every emergency!”

Bobby, who would have preferred his dance music uninterrupted, did allow as the Columbia Broadcasting System knew its stuff.

And when Professor Pierson had first come on, James said, “I think I’ve heard of him—at school.”

“Does sound a little familiar,” Bobby said.

James and Bobby were business majors.

Then all the horror had come over the air, and both boys were concerned and even scared, particularly James, whose family lived in Trenton, New Jersey.

When the general came on and said the route to Trenton was closed, James got really worried and upset. At Newark they stopped at a drugstore, to phone and see if James’s folks were okay.

Two people were working in the drugstore—a pharmacist and a cashier—and three people were there picking up various needs. James and Bobby couldn’t believe these fools were going around like nothing was wrong in their lives, except maybe a headache or athlete’s foot!

James stood up at the front of the store and said, “Everybody—listen to me!”

The cashier put her hands up, and Bobby said, “It’s not a stickup, lady.”

And James—in a clear, concise manner that, had he summoned this in speech class, would have got him far better than his C-minus—told the drugstore audience about what he and Bobby had heard on the radio.

Then James ran to the bank of phone booths, ensconced himself in one, dropped a nickel in the slot and was quickly told that all the lines were jammed and that his call couldn’t go through.

When he stepped from the booth, James saw everyone in the store, including Bobby, seated at the closed soda fountain, listening to a radio on the counter. The pharmacist was on the
stool beside the cashier with his arm around her, she was crying. The other patrons were wailing and moaning and praying.

Professor Pierson’s voice was coming over the air, but the reception was weak: “...
these creatures have scientific knowledge far in advance of our own. It’s my guess that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically no absolute conductivity
.”

James put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder and whispered: “Can’t get through to Mom and Dad. Hell, can’t get through to
anybody
....”

Bobby turned haunted eyes toward James. “If Trenton’s blocked, then...then we have to go back. To Manhattan. We have to make sure Betty’s all right!”

“...by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. That is my conjecture of the origin of the heat ray....”

And so it was that James and Bobby—having done the good deed of warning those in the drugstore of the deadly invasion—raced back out into the night to rescue “the girls” (Betty’s sixteen-year-old sister, naïve or not, suddenly seeming well worth saving from Martians).

State Troopers Chuck and Carmine were not listening to the radio; their Ford Phaeton didn’t even have one.

So when, as they continued patrolling the highway, they noticed traffic heading north was picking up, and picking up speed, they asked, “What the hell?” to each other, a substantial number of times in a short period.

Drivers were travelling at unusually high rates of speed, and in fact the whole traffic pattern seemed erratic.

“Think it’s time to do our job, buddy,” Chuck said.

“Roger,” Carmine said.

Time to start writing out tickets for speeding and reckless driving.

A guy in dark green Chevy sedan streaked by, and the two troopers decided to make him their first example. Carmine, behind the wheel, turned around and took off after him.

The driver showed no signs of realizing state troopers were on his tail.