Death Dimension

by Denis Hughes

  “Something like that,” grunted Dutch. “Conrad didn’t use that window, did he? You knew that.”

  “When I went through it there was a darned great web all over one corner of the lower sash,” said Tern. “I saw it in the flashlight beam, so I know. No one used that window for a long time before me. Spiders aren’t that quick!” He eyed his companion keenly, trying to read his expression in the darkness, failing. “You guessed there was something fishy in Brooking’s story?”

  Dutch nodded. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve been up to that window, I take it? What did you see?”

  “Another lab,” answered Tern thoughtfully. “Several other things, too. Pile of male clothing on a chair, some blood, a lot of paraphernalia that didn’t mean much, and our friend Brooking.” He turned impulsively, gesturing with a rueful grin. “Look, Dutch, get inside that building and work on the swine! I can’t tell you everything yet, but there’s more nasty things going on in there than I like to think about. Briefly, it’s my bet that Conrad never left this building that Brooking killed him because he knew too much and threatened him with exposure. There’s something fiendish cooking, I tell you, with Brooking stirring the pot.”

  Dutch nodded curtly. “I suffer from roughly the same ideas,” he admitted. “But thanks for the tip anyway.”

  Tern grinned. “You might not have got it if I hadn’t pranged,” he said. “What are you aiming to do?”

  Dutch considered briefly. “I have a search warrant,” he admitted. “As a matter of fact I was snooping myself when I found you up there. You say the window’s fixed so it can’t be opened? Never mind…You stay where you are. When I’ve seen Brooking and taken a look round I’ll get an ambulance—or take you home in the car.”

  Tern said nothing, only grunted. He was wondering if he could walk on his own. It was sickening to be stuck like this with so much going on. Then Dutch was moving away in the gloom and he was left alone in the yard at the rear of the block.

  He waited till Dutch had disappeared then hoisted himself to his feet. A little experiment showed that he could walk, slowly and painfully. He decided that he must have torn a muscle in his thigh. But at any rate he wasn’t completely immobilised, which was something to be thankful for.

  It seemed to take hours to reach the end of the alley and start up the other one to the road. By now, he thought, Dutch must have entered the block and discovered what was going on. He cursed his luck again and again. Every inch was a physical effort.

  And then from the direction of the laboratory building came the most appalling human scream Tern had ever listened to.

  It was muffled by walls and windows, but clearly audible. And it was followed almost immediately by the sound of breaking glass, a thin tinkle in the distance.

  Tern hurried on, his mouth a tight line from pain and excitement. What the devil was Dutch up to? But when he reached the end of the alley and peered round into the road he was surprised to see that the inspector was still out in the street, standing back a little, looking upwards. Down the road a black saloon was parked, its lights out. The nearest street lamp cast a sickly glow on the pavement, glinting on broken glass from the front of an upstairs window.

  Dutch shouted something upwards. Tern started down the road, heading towards him. Then from inside the block there came another scream, fear and agony mingled. It ended in a horrible choking sound. Tern’s breath came swiftly.

  “Can’t get in!” Dutch yelled, catching sight of him. “Got to break the door open!”

  Before Tern could answer, and while he still had twenty yards to cover, there was a violent eruption of breaking glass from an upper window. Next instant a grotesque figure landed on the pavement, bouncing lightly, whirling as Dutch lunged forward. Tern witnessed the brief encounter, saw the police officer towering over the extraordinary figure, saw Dutch suddenly crash to the ground and lie still. The figure glanced round, then darted away with amazing speed, to be lost in the darkness.

  Tern, cursing wildly, staggered forward. He could not shake off the feeling that he had just seen a figure from some nightmare world. No human being could have as enormous a head as the one he had seen on the boy-size body. He was horrified, shattered by the swiftness of the apparition and the terrible way in which ‘Happy’ Dutch had measured his length.

  The parked police car sprang into life, speeding down the street. Tern called on his last reserves and reached the side of the fallen man just as the car skated to a halt in the road. Dutch was lying unpleasantly still, his face to the night, his hat in the gutter. There was blood on his skull where the glow of the street lamp caught it.

  A police whistle shrilled farther up the road, another car whined into motion. The thud of running footsteps added to the general confusion. Here and there lights sprang into being along the darkened street. Someone called out a question that was never answered.

  Tern glanced up at the sergeant as the man piled out of the still-rocking car.

  “He’s not dead!” he snapped. “Get him to hospital quick. Looks like a fractured skull.”

  The sergeant knelt quickly, grunted when Tern was confirmed. Then: “Did you see what happened?” he demanded. “I thought I saw a youth or something jump from that window up there. The light was bad though.”

  “No youth!” snarled Tern almost savagely. “It was more like a monster, a cross between a mechanical man and a jack-in-the-box. Didn’t you see the size of its head? And the way it moved? For God’s sake, man, get cracking!”

  Two more cars and three running constables arrived on the scene. Tern, against his will, was bundled into one of the cars and driven off at high speed. The rest of the party went to work on entering the laboratory block. Before he left Tern got a hearing from the sergeant.

  “Someone’s in there hurt,” he said. “Brooking if I’m not mistaken! And you’ll probably find a body, too. If you do it’ll belong to Gregory Conrad. Brooking’s got blood on his hands and his white jacket. There’s a devil’s brew for you.”

  The sergeant had eyed him with a mixture of hostility, scepticism and interest. Whether he believed the yarn or not Tern could not be sure. Dutch had been carefully removed by ambulance. All the smooth efficiency of the police machine was on the job.

  At the station they questioned Tern, checked his damaged leg, took a statement from him and told him to consider himself lucky he wasn’t under arrest.

  “You’d better stay here for the rest of the night,” he was told.

  “But I have to get my story in!” he protested. “I work for a living, damn it!”

  “So do we, Tern. Wait till we get leave to release you. And don’t start talking about unlawful arrest!”

  “What is this then? A convalescent home, or what?”

  The station sergeant grinned, offering a cigarette. “You can call it that if you like,” he replied. “For your own good, that’s all. This story of yours about the figure that jumped from Brooking’s place may be true. On the other hand you may have been mistaken. Whatever hit the inspector did a wonderful job. No boy or youth could have hit so hard.”

  Tern blinked. “You mean you don’t believe me?” he said. “But the sergeant in the car saw it too!”

  “He only thinks he saw something jump. You’re the one who gave a description, Tern. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, that’s all.”

  Tern grunted. His leg was stiff but not impossible. He was deciding whether to try to make a break for it when the desk phone jangled. The sergeant picked it up. When he had finished a brief and singularly one-sided conversation with the unseen caller he glanced at Tern, nodded to the instrument and said goodbye. Then he eyed Tern sternly and folded his hands together.

  “Someone’s lying,” he murmured slowly. “There was no blood, no body, no Brooking in the lab. They combed the entire place. Nothing of an incriminating nature to be found. Are you sure you saw what you say you saw through that window before you fell? Or were you dreaming?”

  Tern mad
e a disgusted noise. “So I’m a liar!” he snapped. “I tell you again, and I’ll go on repeating it, that when I saw Brooking last he had blood on his hands and was doing something that simply must have been very unethical. If you don’t believe me you can go and chase yourselves. The fact that poor old Dutch was of the same opinion doesn’t carry any weight, I suppose?” He lurched to his feet and made for the door of the office. “Anyhow I’m going now, whether you like it or not. And you can’t hold me without a charge, which you haven’t got!”

  The sergeant wore a sad, resigned expression as Tern left the office.

  Jerry Tern limped painfully out into the grey of a foggy dawn. He still had to write up a story—and persuade his editor it was a true one. At any rate there was more solid evidence to back it this time, even if no one believed his theory that Gregory Conrad had been murdered and disposed of by the now-missing scientist.

  A cruising taxi came by. He thought about the girl he had met in the night. He thought about the whole incredible set-up and wondered if he wasn’t really dreaming as the police sergeant had seemed to think. But he knew he was sane enough about it. There was some queer happening to account for, and a very queer being on the loose, something with an enormous head and a body like a boy’s, only it wasn’t a proper human body.

  At his office he was greeted sceptically, with little sympathy for his injured leg. And when he had hammered out the story the sub was even more sceptical insisting that a splash featuring the murderous attack on a police inspector by something that was half-human, half-robot would not be printed without considerably more corroborate on. He went to the trouble of impressing on Tern that the paper was famous for its truthfulness and lack of sensationalism. Tern remained unimpressed, grew somewhat angry, and said he would find another rag where initiative was appreciated. The atmosphere was rapidly becoming heated when he limped through the outer office on his way to unemployment. Not that Tern worried very much.

  He had almost reached the door when someone started to speak on a phone, getting a story. The incredulous excitement in the man’s voice halted Tern against his will. He stopped and moved across to the desk, glancing down at the scribbled shorthand as the reporter took it down. Then he slammed the phone back and stared up at Tern.

  “D’you get that, Jerry?” he demanded. “If this is true there’s a cannibal loose! My God, it doesn’t seem possible, but Jack isn’t usually wrong.”

  Tern seized the pad as others crowded round, gathering because of the evident excitement.

  A young woman had been brutally murdered, her skull crushed like an eggshell. But that was not the worst of it. The body—according to the report—had been torn and horribly mutilated as if some creature had set on it after death with savage fangs.

  Tern was still piecing the news together when the story went through to the editor. The more he gathered the less he liked the sound of it. The murder had taken place less than an hour ago. And someone had caught a glimpse of a strange figure moving swiftly away from the scene of the killing. The figure had been small, very quick-moving, and had a large head. The witness, a road-sweeper, said the figure appeared to be blue in colour, and quite bald, a freak.

  “It’s the same thing that battered Dutch,” Tern said. “I saw it myself, damn it! No one will believe me, but this is the beginning of a reign of terror!’’

  One of the men rubbed his face with the flat of his hand. They were silent for a space.

  “The Blue Peril,” suggested someone else. “Headline it, Joe!”

  Tern looked again at the details of the story. Then he left the office in a hurry, ignoring the plea of the sub to take his job back and stick on the case. The location of the murder had not sunk in on his mind at first, but now he realised with a terrible sinking feeling that the Blue Peril had struck within a few yards of Vivienne Conrad’s home.

  The chain of circumstance that had so far linked the girl to Brooking and the things that Brooking did spurred Tern on with icicles of deep-rooted fear.

  The fog had come down more thickly when he secured a taxi and rumbled through the grey-yellow gloom. He found his anxiety growing with every slow crawling yard of progress, but the fog was a hindrance.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE CELLAR

  There was still a small crowd gathered on the pavement when he arrived. He caught sight of three helmeted heads, a group of staring, goggling people, early workers pausing on their way, perhaps not even knowing what it was all about.

  The lights in the house windows were dim and yellow in the fog. Several doors were open.

  Tern elbowed his way through the crowd, showing his card to one of the policemen. They were not interested; several other newspaper men had already been, it appeared. There was nothing to see. The body had been found on the cold damp pavement just about where they were standing. No, it had not been identified yet.

  Tern wormed his way quickly to the house where Vivienne lived. It was frighteningly close to the murder scene. His heart was thumping as he ran up the steps and thumbed the bell-push. As the seconds ticked by they stretched out to eternity in his strained imagination. Then the door opened and the pale foggy light fell on Vivienne’s face.

  For an instant Tern held his breath, then he seized her hands and gripped them tightly.

  “Thank heaven you’re all right!” he muttered awkwardly. “I was so afraid…”

  She swallowed. “Come in,” she said. “You’re not the only one to be scared.” At sight of him she had exhibited genuine signs of relief and pleasure.

  He stepped in and stood while she closed the door on the fog of the morning. She was still wearing a dressing gown over pyjamas, with small blue mules on her feet. Blue, he thought…

  The light was on in a room towards the back of the house. He followed her down the hallway.

  “Coffee?” she said. “Have you had your breakfast yet?”

  He shook his head. “No time,” he admitted. “Quite a lot has happened since we parted.” While he talked and told her about ‘Happy’ Dutch and his throwing up the paper she was busy with a frying pan on the gas stove. A certain sense of camaraderie had sprung up between them now, removing all the awkwardness there might so easily have been.

  “It was frightful,” she said when he had finished. “I heard a terrible cry while I was still asleep. It woke me up. When I looked out of the window I saw something bending over what must have been the body not far away. The light was too bad to see anything clearly, of course, and the fog didn’t help either.” She paused. “If I’d known it was the thing that you saw jump from Brooking’s laboratory I’d have had a fit!”

  Tern was worried and not a little puzzled. Why, he asked himself, had the Blue Peril come to this particular neighbourhood from the lab? Was it a mere coincidence? Or had something else guided it? Something connected with Conrad that led it to where his sister lived? There was fear in the thought, for if it had substance it might come again. Unless, of course, the police effected a capture. But somehow when he remembered that incredible turn of speed of which the creature was capable he began to wonder whether they would catch it so simply.

  They breakfasted, discussing the strange events of the night.

  “What are you going to do now that you’re out of a job?” she asked quietly.

  He eyed her ruefully. Then the old grin spread across his face. “Take a holiday,” he said. “A useful break in which I might even dig up something really worthwhile.”

  She frowned. “About my brother, you mean?”

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “Where will you start? I—I’d like to help if you’ll have me.”

  He pondered, although he already knew the result. “Now that Brooking has disappeared I should very much like to make a thorough search of his lab,” he said. “The police will be nosing around, naturally, but we might slip past them. You see, Vivienne, I’m certain he didn’t leave that building between the time I heard a scream and the moment the police arrived and su
rrounded the place. Either he’s still inside it, or he has a bolt hole we don’t know about. There is also the problem of what became of your brother. It’s never been settled—not to my satisfaction anyway.”

  She pushed back the hair from her forehead and smiled. “When do we start, Jerry? You’re a pretty nice person, aren’t you?” she said.

  He grinned. “Going to do the washing-up now?”

  “Leave it,” she said. “I’ll go and dress. Be with you in ten minutes dead.”

  Tern was thoughtful as he piled the plates in the sink and sluiced them clean. He wondered if he was wise in bringing this girl into the picture. But at least if he took her into partnership he would know more or less where she was all the time. And with a thing like the Blue Peril floating around loose it would be better for his peace of mind.

  She was wearing a smartly-cut black costume when she showed up again. Her head was bare, but she carried a small black hat in one hand and a bag in the other. Side-by-side they headed for the front door, “This fog will wreck my hair,” she complained.

  He shot her an appreciative sidelong glance. Nothing could wreck her hair, he thought. Aloud he said: “Put your hat on.”

  A taxi dropped them in the neighbourhood of the laboratory. Tern’s plan of action was vague, but the fog, denser than ever now, was more help than hindrance. Leaving the taxi, they bought an early paper. It contained a garbled version of the murder and mention too, of the attack on Inspector Dutch, who was stated to be still unconscious. There were, however, wild rumours and even wilder descriptions of the assailant. The British public at its breakfast table was expected to believe that some fantastic creature with the strength of a Goliath and a stature ranging from that of a pigmy to a thing of enormous proportions was at large in the metropolis.

  Tern’s face was grim as he and Vivienne read the news by the light of a street lamp that struggled weakly through the pall of fog.