The Touch of Death

by John Creasey

  “Go to the door!” she cried.

  They ran towards it. Banister looked behind him, and saw that she was backing towards it. Only Anak and Klim were alive, and they were following her. Yet they did not move quickly. Banister saw Anak put his hand to his pocket, and saw him draw a knife.

  “Rita!”

  The floor of the great chamber was trembling. Banister, in the doorway, felt it, felt himself shaking as if he were in the centre of a great earthquake. There was the thunderous rumbling of the splitting earth and the breaking walls of the chamber.

  A great gap appeared at Anak’s feet.

  Before he could throw the knife, it swallowed him up. Klim disappeared into it, and the great machine vanished. The earth shook and the walls began to crumble. The walls broke.

  Rita was running towards Banister.

  The door stood open; Palfrey was holding it. Ahead lay a lighted tunnel, so far untouched.

  “Run, run, run!” screamed Rita.

  As they ran, the walls and the floor shook, and the noise of the vanishing mountain stronghold was in their ears every moment, as if giants were roaring and deafening them. Lights went out, one by one. They could hardly see, they could only hear – it sounded as if the world itself were chasing them.

  Behind them, the floor crumbled away.

  They ran with wild speed, unseeing, drawn by distant lights, until suddenly a blast of icy wind came towards them. Beyond, they could see the pale light of evening. They passed through a doorway which should have been locked and bolted, and was made of steel. They stumbled out into the snow. As they fell, one against the other, the mountain itself shook and quivered. Snow was tossed up into the air and fell again, like a gigantic waterfall.

  Out here, the noise was more terrifying still.

  Explosions split the mountain. Beneath the gentle light of the evening sky, huge craters appeared. One mountain peak, its summit so high that it looked as if it were touching the stars, began to fall.

  It toppled . . .

  The topmost peak vanished into the crater that the disappearance of the mountain made.

  The three people on the mountain-side felt the awful coldness of the wind and the snow; but watched the gaunt gigantic shapes disappear. The whole skyline changed.

  As they had watched, the longer shadows of the night had fallen upon them, and now it was dark but for the brilliance of the stars. Dust rose in mighty clouds, but the wind drove it away, and to the north there was the clear sky and those stars.

  They began to walk, Rita between the two men; and each felt perished, each knew that the cold was so great that there was little hope of survival, even if they could walk across the new-flung rocks without vanishing into the frozen bowels of the earth.

  Then they saw a light.

  They heard nothing, but they saw more lights.

  They saw men.

  One man came towards them, bringing his lantern. He was so close that they could see him opening his mouth, but could not hear anything that he said. Soon, he was with them. It was Doggett.

  He took Rita and carried her over his shoulder, and led the way. In a few minutes they were in the warmth of a cave, sheltered from the wind and the snow; and there was real warm food, the promise of life – even if it were only the life they could lead in these mountains.

  “We’ve two ‘planes – Project Ninety-seven – that we think will work,” said Doggett. “Enough for taking us all away. Nine survivors. All that’s left of High Peak. Couldn’t salvage anything. Can’t get samples of fatalis or the details of pulveris, can’t—”

  “We’re going to get away!” Banister shouted.

  “We’re going to escape!” Palfrey cried.

  Rita sprang to her feet, jumping, shouting, waving her hands wildly, laughing, crying.

  “I didn’t think we’d do it,” she gasped wildly. “I didn’t think we should.” She flung herself into Banister’s arms, kissed him fiercely, wildly. “I thought we’d die. I thought we’d fail. It’s been worth it, worth it, worth it!” She ran from Banister and seized Palfrey, kissed him, flung herself into his arms, laughing, crying, screaming the same words, and of them all, the clearest were: “It’s been worth it, worth it, worth it!”

  Chapter 24

  Banister walked slowly towards his flat in Wickham Mews, past the spot where Monk-Gilbert had died; and where he had first come in contact with the attempt to dominate the world. It was a month since he had returned to London, but nothing was really clear, he could not think as he had once been able to. He would walk along a crowded London street or sit in a taxi or go rumbling through the Underground; and he would see and hear the collapse of ice-capped mountains.

  It would be warm sunshine, and he would feel the icy touch of snow.

  A soft, warm wind would blow, and brush his cheeks with a blast so cold that he would shiver.

  But the moments were getting less frequent; there were more times, when he could think and behave normally – even when he could talk about what had happened rationally, without suddenly breaking down; or trembling, or collapsing. Those who had asked the questions had been very gentle – and even more gentle with Rita, who was only now beginning to recover. At times Banister wondered if she would ever be sane again.

  She was in a nursing home, and he had just been to see her. He did not yet know how she had come to serve Anak, or just when she had rebelled.

  It was daylight, but it seemed dark – as it had been on that night when he had left his flat and noticed that a lamp was out, and then kicked against a dead body, heard a scream and seen a blinding light.

  There was a light at the window of his flat. That didn’t surprise him, because Palfrey had a key – so had Andromovitch. They had developed a habit of gathering there instead of at Brierly Place, where there were always crowds and where the telephone was never silent.

  Doggett was staying here, too.

  The others who had escaped, including the young American, were back in the homes which they had left before they had gone to the Higher World.

  Palfrey, Andromovitch, Bruton and Banister, with help from Doggett and a little from Rita, had been preparing a summary of the history of High Peak and the Higher World. They now knew, beyond any doubt, that the other mountain cities had also been destroyed. Among the men of the Resistance had been one who had been able to turn the beam on all of the citadels; and although he had not expected to escape, he had acted – a moment before Anak, in his wild fury, had been ready to crumble half the world.

  Banister walked up the little flight of stone steps, and let himself in.

  He heard Palfrey’s voice, and Andromovitch’s; then the unmistakable voice of Bruton. He didn’t go straight into the front room. This was one of his bad moments, and he wanted to get over it. So he went into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed.

  Apart from the two aircraft, Project 97, which Mick had completed just before his death, they had salvaged very little. Doggett had brought away certain documents and formulae, which would help them to trace the source of fatalis, and perhaps in some unforeseeable day in the future create radio beams as powerful as pulveris. There were supplies of fatalis hidden somewhere “down here”, but no prospect of finding them. It could not be stored indefinitely; in a few months stocks would lose their deadliness.

  The men had also brought away all the bearings needed to place the other mountain cities – seven in all, as well as nine stations, inhabited by a few dozen people, and used for relaying beams, sending messages and refuelling transport aircraft.

  All the aircraft had flown considerably above the highest level known to normal aeronautical research workers.

  There were several hundred agents in the world, some of them known by name, some unknown. As far as Doggett and Rita knew, none of these had had any great scientific knowled
ge, and they were not likely to constitute any threat in the future. Some might have a supply of fatalis, and might be dangerous for a while; but on their own they were more likely to hide, hoping to escape discovery.

  Banister stood up slowly, lit a cigarette and went across to the other room.

  He tapped, and Bruton opened the door.

  The three Z.5 men and Doggett were together, the room was a blue haze of smoke, and there was a smell of beer. Several bottles, most of them open, stood on a small table. The large table was a mass of diagrams. Palfrey sat at it, his silky hair ruffled, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his lips, a vacant expression in his eyes.

  Andromovitch, quite large enough to make two of them, sprawled on a couch beneath the window. Doggett and Bruton took upright chairs, leaving the one armchair for Banister to drop into.

  Andromovitch stretched out his long arms, picked up a bottle of beer, opened it and handed it with a glass to Banister.

  Already, Banister felt better. There was a remarkable normality about these men. Whatever they did, they were human beings. They had the gift, Banister realised, of restoring one’s faith; he wasn’t sure what the faith was in.

  “Hallo, Neil,” Palfrey said. “How is Rita?”

  “I think she’s better.”

  “Splendid. We’ve just been saying again that without her, we shouldn’t have had a chance. If it comes to that, you—”

  Banister said: “Forget it, can’t you?”

  Palfrey began to play with a few strands of hair.

  “That’s the trouble,” he said. “People will. Remind them that they were within an ace of being pulverised, and people look blank or they suggest that it was an exaggeration. Fatalis? Yes, strange, wasn’t it – that affair at Wentworth Stadium especially. There are times,” went on Palfrey with gentle emphasis, “when I despair of my fellow humans.”

  “Especially me,” murmured Andromovitch.

  “Especially those I know well,” agreed Palfrey, still playing with his hair. “Look at the number of times we’ve been on the verge of disaster and have escaped by the skin of our teeth. It’ll never happen again, the statesmen cry, and in a few years, it does happen again. At first, Anak simply discovered a way to add oxygen to the rarefied air of great mountains. People could live quite normally at very low temperatures. In fact, the people need ‘conditioning’ – you felt bad when you first reached High Peak, but soon got used to it, didn’t you?”

  Banister said: “Yes.”

  “You see what I mean,” said Palfrey plaintively. “It didn’t even occur to him to marvel at the fact that people could ski and generally have fun in the Antarctic. He just took it for granted when it was happening!”

  “I apologise,” said Banister, humbly. His eyes sparkled, he felt much better than when he had come in.

  “Once Anak was able to do that, much was fairly easy,” Palfrey went on. “He got his men away – and soon took women to them, even a would-be Dictator of the world knows that you can’t keep ‘em apart for long! Then with modern methods adapted to a far greater degree than we’ve seen before, he built the cities within the mountains, grew food, did everything necessary. From America he got the latest designs in ventilation and artificial daylight. Then he had machine parts and machines shipped to small islands and transported by larger aircraft up to High Peak and the other strongholds, before having his own factories built and made ready. It took him many years. The one bitter lesson I’ve learned is that he did it successfully. No one knew, no one guessed. Promising young scientists and research workers, chemists and doctors, all left one country or another ostensibly to take up residence in another; they disappeared. It was all very cleverly done, but it shouldn’t have been possible.”

  Palfrey paused.

  They were all sitting up now, waiting on his words.

  “After a while, he found that he could manufacture everything he wanted there, but he had problems of labour, materials and research workers. We know that he recruited his slave labour from people who couldn’t or wouldn’t go on working for him. He found a lot of raw materials in the mountains, but he bought more on world markets – grim evidence that sellers of the raw materials of death still don’t care who they sell to, provided they get the money.”

  No one interrupted.

  The tone of Palfrey’s voice changed; became almost savage.

  “One day perhaps the idiots who control our destinies will realise that there must be international control of scientific discoveries – that we can’t let nations or groups of nations or of people exploit them by themselves. Now it’s all over, what’s happening? Fake Peace Conferences. Lie upon lie upon lie tossed about. It’s beginning all over again. Just for a few weeks, under the danger, we all forgot our differences. Now there’s no more danger, so we can afford to cut each other’s throats. Well, we’ve got it all here. How it started, where it went to, who was affected, who Anak was—”

  Banister stirred.

  “Who was he?”

  “The natural son of a Finnish woman and an Englishman,” he said. “His father did a lot of work in the north of Finland, and made this discovery of how to live normally in conditions of extreme cold. It began from that. Anak’s father discovered gold in places not yet properly surveyed. After the father’s death, Anak unloaded his fortune slowly on to the world market – and the market let him. Then he proved to have financial genius, and followed that by finding precious metals in various places. That’s how he came across fatalis in certain low-content uranium ore, not worth working for the usual reasons. He developed it with the help of brilliant scientists who shared his ideas. That’s how it all built up.

  “Klim and the other leaders were with him from the beginning. The odd, the frightening thing,” went on Palfrey, “is that they appear to have started out as genuine idealists, wanting to see one world run on democratic lines. Gradually the power bug got into their systems; they let it corrupt them. Once that happened—” He shrugged, and tapped the report in front of him. “This is for Goverments to study, then for special committees, and the United Nations – then for the archives – then for the limbo of forgotten things. Like all the rest.”

  He smiled at Banister.

  “That too cynical for you, Neil?”

  “No,” said Banister, slowly. “No, not really. I can imagine how you feel. There’s one thing you may not think amounts to much, but—”

  Palfrey smiled.

  “Rita, yes—Monk-Gilbert’s niece. She was first approached because her uncle was a uranium man. She joined the Anak gang. Monk-Gilbert didn’t know she was spying on him. Officially she worked for a mysterious – non-existent – Mr. Menzies, so that she could say she was going with him whenever she was out of the country.

  “It’s now known that Monk-Gilbert discovered she had stolen some of his secrets. He wanted to see her, to challenge her. She wasn’t home. He thought she was still engaged to you, and was going to see you. Anak and Klim were told. They didn’t know what we’d discovered, and didn’t want Monk-Gilbert to give any details away, so he was attacked.

  “In fact, he’d discovered fatalis, but hated the idea of passing on all knowledge about it. He wanted to keep it secret, wouldn’t give me or anyone else full details. But he would have, if he’d been sure that Rita had passed it on to anyone else. So, he had to be killed. His murderers smashed his skull, hoping to hide the fact that he’d died from fatalis. You know what happened then.” Palfrey paused, then added slowly: “Whatever Rita did, she made up for it.”

  Banister felt a sense of deep humility.

  “She’ll be perfectly all right, too,” Palfrey told him. “I’ve the word of the best doctors in Europe. You’ll both be all right. You’re the only two people in the world who are entitled to forget, and there are moments when I think you’ll be the only two who’ll remember.” H
e paused. “Neil, Anak had an almost hypnotic control of Rita. He often exerted it. She knew that. The fact that she resisted at all is one of the miracles. Now, she needs all the help you can give her.”

  “She’ll get it,” Banister said.

  The day came when the pallor faded from Rita’s lips, when her eyes were calm and free from fear, and when, with Banister, she could walk and talk and be natural.

  “I forget most of the time,” she said one day as they walked from the flat. “The worst things were—”

  “Don’t harass yourself,” Banister said quickly.

  “It’s better to talk,” Rita said. “Finding that you were right and fooling Klim and Anak. I even betrayed Mick! Neil, I had to, because the guards knew what had happened. I knew they would report automatically, and Klim and Anak would have wondered why I kept silent. Once I’d decided, I had to keep up the pretence. Sometimes—I doubted if I were right, whether I could help to destroy all they had built up. I was right, Neil, wasn’t I? Tell me I was right.”

  Banister said gruffly: “Of course you were.”

  They walked on, quietly.

  Endnote

  [1] See The Children of Hate.

  Series Information

  Published or to be published by

  House of Stratus

  Dates given are those of first publication

  Alternative titles in brackets

  'The Baron' (47 titles) (writing as Anthony Morton)

  'Department 'Z'' (28 titles)

  'Dr. Palfrey Novels' (34 titles)

  'Gideon of Scotland Yard' (22 titles)

  'Inspector West' (43 titles)

  'Sexton Blake' (5 titles)

  'The Toff' (59 titles)

  along with:

  The Masters of Bow Street

  This epic novel embraces the story of the Bow Street Runners and the Marine Police, forerunners of the modern police force, who were founded by novelist Henry Fielding in 1748. They were the earliest detective force operating from the courts to enforce the decisions of magistrates. John Creasey's account also gives a fascinating insight into family life of the time and the struggle between crime and justice, and ends with the establishment of the Metropolitan Police after the passing of Peel's Act in 1829.