by Denis Hughes
DEATH DIMENSION
And
BLUE PERIL
Denis Hughes
© Denis Hughes 1952, © the Estate of Denis Hughes 2016
Denis Hughes has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Curtis Warren Ltd. in 1952.
This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
DEATH DIMENSION
CHAPTER 1
LONDON TO NEW YORK
CHAPTER 2
SINGLE BED
CHAPTER 3
COMPLEX EXISTENCE
CHAPTER 4
MOB VIOLENCE
CHAPTER 5
NO PEACE FOR THE DEAD
CHAPTER 6
VARDEN STRIKES
CHAPTER 7
A WOMAN’S FAITH
CHAPTER 8
MENTAL PROBE
CHAPTER 9
FUGITIVE
CHAPTER 10
THE SWITCH IS THROWN
CHAPTER 11
“TURN AWAY, PILGRIM”
CHAPTER 12
AND DARKNESS CAME
BLUE PERIL
CHAPTER 1
MAN ON THE RUN
CHAPTER 2
MONSTROUS NIGHT
CHAPTER 3
THE PERIL STRIKES
CHAPTER 4
THE CELLAR
CHAPTER 5
HOSTAGES OF TERROR
CHAPTER 6
FOD ON THE RIVER
CHAPTER 7
COURTSHIP DEFERRED
CHAPTER 8
NIGHT OPERATIONS
CHAPTER 9
FLARE PATH TAKE-OFF
CHAPTER 10
HOSTILE RECEPTION
CHAPTER 11
BROADCAST COMMAND
CHAPTER 12
HOMEWARD BOUND
CHAPTER 1
LONDON TO NEW YORK
“My dear girl,” said Varden a little impatiently, “you’ve got the whole aspect of it wrong from the very beginning. How on earth can anyone prevent a war? I ask you! The thing’s got to come, and to my way of thinking the sooner the better.” He raised his glass of Sauterne and watched the face of the girl across the table.
She wasn’t a bad looking girl, he reflected. Not a patch on Viki, of course, but then a man who spent his time flitting back and forth across the Atlantic had to fix himself up with amusement at both ends.
She was very small. Her hair was a sheath of burnished copper that moulded her skull. Varden liked the dusting of tiny brown freckles on her throat, but was never sure of the grave intelligence that so frequently peeped from the depths of her greeny coloured eyes.
She was fiddling with a little piece of bread now, crumbling it between her fingers, rolling scraps of it to pellets on the snow white table linen. Long brown lashes covered her eyes as she stared down at the wine glass before her.
“I don’t think I’ve got it wrong,” she said. “It’s you, Bob, who is seeing things in the wrong perspective. You’re the one who wants to blast civilisation to pieces.” Her eyes were suddenly fierce, as if she resented his most natural instinct. And yet it was what a lot of other people, normal, sober people, thought. The world was ripe for explosion. Even a man like Varden, just a flying man, a pilot on a freight run from England to the U.S.A., could feel like that—and argue about it with a red-head in a London night club.
“Listen,” he said, very gravely. “It’s either they who start it or our side. And if we aren’t damn quick it’ll be them.”
Her eyes were hooded again, avoiding the swift impatience of his stare. “You’re a fool!” she said quietly. For a red-head she kept her temper well. She had one, but Varden had never tasted its whiplash as yet. Had he done so he might have been more careful in his attack on her principles.
He glanced round at the crowded tables, the tiny dancing space where a herd of cattle milled in their paltry amusement to the tinny clamour of a band. It wouldn’t last. There would come a moment when all this would dissolve in a great orange flash, he told himself.
“You’re wrong,” he said more gently. “I wish I could make you see it, Rhonna, because if I fail you’ll get a nasty shock.”
She raised her head, looking him squarely in the eyes. “I doubt it,” she said very softly. “My father will stop it.” She broke off. “Stop it dead before it really begins. He can, you know—if he’s given time.”
Varden raised his glass in a mocking toast. “Here’s to luck,” he said. There was a cynical edge to his voice. To Varden there seemed only one way out of the stalemate mess the world was in. Like many others he counselled what all men feared in their hearts. Ignorance, perhaps. Or plain bloody-mindedness.
“I don’t want to end civilisation,” he said. “I merely want to ensure that it goes on in the way I’ve grown used to. That can only happen if we make our play first.” He reached out across the table, covering her fingers with his hand. She did not resist, just looked, at him, wondering, trying to make up her mind as it were.
“Once you start it you’ll never stop it,” she said.
He shrugged. “We’ll finish ’em off too quickly for that.”
The red headed girl gave a dry laugh. There was no trace of humour in it. Varden wished he’d never asked her out for the evening. This was too much of a strain. He thought of Viki in New York, and decided he liked her better. There were no complexes with that piece of womanhood! She was built for one thing, and one thing only. And she knew it, which was more to the point.
“All right,” he said wearily “Forget it, will you? No hydrogen bombs, no atomics, no death. Just you and I for a while, huh?”
She didn’t smile. “I haven’t finished yet,” she said with deadly calm. “You’re not the sort of man I imagined when we met. There’s a lot that’s nice about you, Bob; but an awful lot more that’s rotten.” She met his gaze frankly. “And now will you take me home, please?”
Something hot and angry stung in Varden’s brain, a branding iron going deep and being twisted. Small white spots appeared at the sides of his nose, round his mouth. Red ones on his cheek bones, spots of colour. There was none in his eyes.
“Very well,” he said, turning his head. “Waiter!”
In the taxi a sense of guilt made him say: “If I tried to apologise—”
“It wouldn’t be any use,” she finished abruptly. “Thanks for everything, Bob, except this last. You’re very conceited, and you think that people ought to give you credit for thinking of everything first. I don’t mean I’m sorry I met you. I’m not. I’ve enjoyed the experience, but when you jeered at my father’s ability to keep the world sane you finished yourself.”
Varden felt something slipping from his grasp; something he had never even held with any firmness.
The taxi stopped. Rain fell in a steady drizzle on the glistening pavements. The girl stepped out and walked in through the entrance of a building, not looking back.
Varden stood and watched her disappear, tapping a cigarette on his thumb nail as his eyes followed her. The taxi was still waiting. He grinned at the driver. “I’ll walk,” he said.
As the red tail light drifted away and was lost in the drizzle, he scowled and turned his collar up. He’d been a fool; and even if he wanted to fill in a few spare hours with Rhonna in the future she’d turn him down. All because they didn’t see eye to eye about war. Walking stolidly, he made for his own hotel. War. It had to come, no matter what people like Rhonna’s father thought they could do to prevent it. Scientists! It was they who made wars in a way; not stopped them. Yet…She’d sounded very sure of herself. In spite of his scepticism, he wondered. An
d then he remembered again how definite Merrick was in his views. He ought to know. If a man in big business in New York didn’t read the signs rightly no one else was likely to. Varden shrugged his broad shoulders resignedly. If there was going to be a war let them get it started as soon as possible; and let it be the right side who started it.
He went to bed in a restless frame of mind, thinking by turn of Rhonna Blake, Merrick, big and blustery, Viki, all woman. Maybe tomorrow night he’d be in better company. The girl with red hair and freckles was too intense.
*
Sitting up there in the cockpit of the two hundred ton jet-engined freighter, Varden raised his hand to the man on the ground. A green light winked from flying control. Stretching out in front was the runway, long and clean and black in the morning sun. He gunned the engines and the great plane rolled slowly round for a take-off. La Guardia Field in six hours flat…that was the schedule. He glanced across at his co-pilot and grinned. “Here we go,” he said. Peterson nodded and talked to the radio as Varden opened up and fired the take-off assisting rockets. Their added roar filled the cabin. There were no other people on board apart from Varden and Peterson; this was a freight run, pure and simple. And, like a thousand others before it, it was swift, uneventful, a smooth, stratospheric flight in the year 2017. Six hours from take-off Varden brought the monster plane down to a perfect landing on La Guardia Field, New York. Routine.
*
Merrick was a big man in every way—in his size, his manner and his influence. “How’s life in England?” he inquired. “Do you still jog around with the Blake girl? Or are you faithful to Viki?”
Varden scowled and examined his glass of Scotch. “I see her sometimes,” he answered evasively. “She’s a bit of a bore, and I get rather tired of being told that her father can stop a war from ever starting. That’s the part that infuriates me”“
Merrick laughed. “No one can stop it!” he said.
“Hmmmm…I was wondering what men like Rhonna’s father could do to prevent it.”
“Nothing! An old fool’s pipe dream, that’s all it is.”
Varden grinned crookedly. “That’s more or less what I told her myself,” he said. “She didn’t like me for it.”
Merrick leant forward earnestly. “You didn’t by any chance discover what lines he’s working on, did you?”
Varden shook his head. “’Fraid not.”
“I just wondered, that was all. No importance, but it might make a difference. Never can tell.” His speech became staccato.
Varden eyed him with sudden shrewdness. He really thought Merrick would be pleased if someone did start a war right now. It was a thought that caused him vague misgivings. Merrick wasn’t that kind of man, he told himself. Then he forgot about it as Viki joined them.
Viki Rochelle was a honey blonde with a flair for accentuating her physical charms. The ones that were not actually visible were so subtly suggested that a blind man would have known all about them. When she said “Hello,” her voice was a pure caress. Not so pure, perhaps, but a verbal caress for all that.
*
The lights in Viki’s luxury flat were fully in keeping with the sentiments and objects of the tenant herself. Varden looked about appreciatively as he lounged back in a deep seated Chesterfield with a highball in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Viki was changing out of evening dress. Varden waited eyes half closed in the softly lighted room, thinking and dreaming as he had done on more than one occasion in this flat before.
When the door opened he turned his head. She stood there for a moment, watching him, smiling with that hungry mouth of hers in a way that made him catch his breath. When he set his glass down his hand was not quite steady.
She moved slowly across to a radio cabinet while he fixed her a drink. The dim light gleamed whitely on her skin through the black lace wrapper she wore.
“Make it a strong one,” she told him huskily. The radio came on with a plonk and quietened as she tuned it in. Then the announcer’s nasal intonation came across the air:
“Station XX4 with the latest news, folks!” We are glad to be able to make this announcement. Complete agreement has been reached between the two major factions of the civilised world, and there is now no possible likelihood of war breaking out.” The announcer paused for breath, paper crackled as he turned his notes. “The executives and administrators of these two great blocs have been meeting in a secret session, the result of which has just been published. Full details will follow as soon as this station gets a later report, but the main thing, folks, is that war has been averted! Nothing could be better news than that, and we are sure our listeners will join us in giving those boys a great big hand!” Again a pause for breath. “And now—”
Viki turned the set off with a vicious twist of her fingers. “Fools!” she muttered.
Varden, who was moving towards her with a glass in his hand, gave her a startled look. Her face was whiter than before, the full red mouth drawn tight in a way that was almost evil. For an instant the languorous eyes were slitted. Then she was in full control once more; but not before Varden was left with a distinctly uncomfortable sensation of having seen right inside her soul.
“Here’s to luck,” he said, handing her the glass. “No war, eh? That’s a pretty important thing, honey.”
She shrugged elegantly, smiling again and standing very close in front of him. He looked down at the sheer seductiveness of her, forgetting what he’d glimpsed but a moment before.
“There will be a war for all they decide,” she whispered.
“Come on over and sit down,” he said. His arm went round her slender, sinuous waist. She leaned back against it, teasing him.
“Don’t you want a war?” she murmured. “You’d enjoy it, wouldn’t you? Think of the opportunities!”
He led her towards the divan. “If a war broke out I’d see very little of you,” he whispered. “That would hurt.”
Her eyes flashed. “You’d have your Rhonna in England,” she reminded him wickedly.
Varden didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to get out of his depth with this girl as well. Then he remembered that her solicitude for him didn’t quite add up with that queer expression he’d caught on her face when the news came that peace was ensured. He might have tried to sort it out in his mind had not Viki herself turned his thoughts into other channels by an act as old as time.
CHAPTER 2
SINGLE BED
The insistent voices on the radio stilled as the freight plane winged on its way. Peterson was listening intently, listening to the disembodied tones of Met stating sober facts. Peterson was worried by what he heard. Violent electric storms were building up in a line along the western seaboard of Europe, deepening in a cold front and moving fast. Varden stared ahead through the Perspex, noting the black wall of cloud in front. It stretched north and south without a break. Peterson spoke to him, telling him the latest report. Varden tried to climb above the front, but the hold cumulonimbus towered far into the sky, its inner bowels riven by lightning and stirred by wind.
“She won’t clear it, Pete,” he said. “And we haven’t the fuel to turn back now.”
They flew north and south, seeking a break in the storm front. There was none. And in the meantime the front was forcing him further and further back across the Atlantic.
“Only chance is to try flying through it,” he said tersely. Peterson said nothing. They’d probably tear the wings off.
Varden put the nose down, built up speed to the limit, and streaked in, knowing that if he failed he’d be lucky to come out alive.
Darkness closed in on the plane, seeming to shut it away from the world of light. He felt a sickening jolt and was flying blind, the two hundred tons that carried him being tossed around in a way that was frightening. Lightning crackled and flashed all round them. The radio went dead. Varden could feel the concussion of thunder above the roaring whine of the jets. Peterson said something to him but the words were lost. Even in t
he sealed cabin it was icy cold; frozen rain slashed at the fuselage.
Giant hands caught and gripped the aircraft, turning it over and over as if it were a toy. Varden was thrown against his straps, hurting his shoulder. To his horror the plane would no longer answer the controls. Something had gone. He stared round wildly, but there was only the turbulent heart of the storm outside and, thousands of feet below, the wind-lashed sea.
The freighter was losing height now, being hurled downwards as swiftly as the eddies had carried it aloft. They’d have to get out of the ship or go down to the sea-bed with it. Varden sweated and knew what fear was like. By a rough reckoning the aircraft was a hundred miles west of Ireland.
He left the ship to do what it liked; there was nothing he could do now. It was out of control and diving fast. Come on!” he gasped to Peterson. “Jump!”
They fought their way back and fitted ’chutes. Lightning played weirdly on the fuselage as they moved. Varden’s hands were shaking. You’re yellow! he muttered to himself. Yellow! He didn’t like the thought. Losing sight of his companion, he groped for the escape hatch. It was then that the lightning struck.
One instant he was clawing through the hatch, praying wildly; the next he was bathed in a vivid blue blast of dancing light. The crackle of it battered his brain to pulp. He sagged where he was, then was hurled across the sloping floor. From somewhere forward came a deafening crash. The fuselage seemed to burst in a bloom of flame, disintegrating, spilling its cargo broadcast, then the pieces fell, scattering like broken eggshell.
Peterson was dead when his body fell, but the slip-line of Varden’s ’chute caught an angle of sundered metal and opened of its own accord. As his limp body drifted down in the wake of the wreckage he seemed to see through the darkness of insensibility a second figure alongside his own, a figure that grinned with evil humour and mouthed at him cruelly, a figure that was identical to Robert Varden,
*
