by Denis Hughes
“Jerry!” he gasped. “What the hell’s this? Are they after you?”
Tern gaped, muttered something under his breath and seized his adversary by the arm. “Quick, Pete!” he snapped. “Get moving, damn you! They’ll be here in a second!” The noisy thud of footsteps was rapidly approaching now.
Peter Duval, a newspaper reporter like Tern, and an old friend, barely hesitated. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” he grunted, “but get a move on!”
Tern needed no further urging. With Duval at his side he scampered down the street, cursing the luck as he ran. His leg had stiffened up painfully and had it not been for a helping hand from his colleague the pursuit would almost certainly have overtaken him. As it was all sound of the pack died away before they had covered a quarter of a mile, the thin noise of the whistles seeming to go off at a tangent towards the river.
“You’re safe now,” grunted Duval. He stopped and kept a hold on Tern’s arm. “Now,” he went on more grimly, “tell me what’s up?” He eyed Tern in the yellow gloom, trying to read his expression.
Tern said: “Nothing’s up, you clot! I just didn’t want to get involved in that chase; that’s all. It wasn’t anything to do with me. Who were they chasing anyway?”
Duval seemed surprised. “Fine newspaper man you are!” he said disgustedly. “The police have been milling round that block where the fellow Brooking lived and worked for the past hour. Someone—they think it was Brooking—made a break and got clear, hence the fuss. He was thought to have ducked in this direction. I’m covering for my paper.”
“And I was working independently,” said Tern. “I had a hunch that didn’t come off; the less said the better.” He was by now desperately anxious to shake off Duval and return to the cruiser, but his friend showed every sign of staying. Duval was a shrewd man with a nose for a mystery, and Tern knew quite well that at the moment he himself represented one.
“Let me in on this hunch,” said Duval firmly. “Two are better than one when it comes to sorting something out. I might help and we could share the story.”
“But it’s nothing to do with Brooking and the murders!” he protested. “This is something entirely separate. You stick to your own chore, pal.”
Duval grinned sardonically. “You’re a rotten liar, Jerry! Come on, out with it! Had an idea Brooking might try for that ship of his, I suppose? Well, maybe that was what he intended when he broke and ran from the lab. But he won’t reach it. They’ve thrown a cordon on all streets giving access to the warehouse district. If he does try it’ll be too bad!”
Tern did not know whether to believe this information or not. But he was certainly a very worried man. What view would the Blue Peril take of all the noise of police activity? It would be the easiest thing imaginable for the Thing to decide that he, Tern, was responsible. And Vivienne…
Glancing round in the murk, he suddenly struck out at Duval, landing a telling blow in his stomach. Then he was running as fast as his damaged leg would permit, sliding fast into the protective curtain of the fog.
Duval, recovering, shouted some abuse after him, but made no attempt to take up the chase. He must have thought Tern was crazy, or that he had guessed right about the boat-house stunt. Whichever way it was Tern had a comparatively clear field, but wondered what had happened on the cruiser.
When he stopped running it was to find to his dismay that he was hopelessly lost. The realisation brought renewed anxiety in its train.
He halted and leant against a damp wall, getting his breath back and thinking fast. If Duval was right Brooking had recovered his senses in the cellar and made a break by way of the building itself. The man was apparently at large, and in this fog was likely to remain so for a considerable time. But in the meantime the Monster that Brooking had created was holding Vivienne hostage and he, Tern, could not return for two reasons. First: he was lost; and second: according to Duval the cruiser was being watched. Or at any rate approaches to it. But he could not be sure on that last score. Duval himself might have been lying, or misinformed. He had to find out.
Slowly and laboriously, with many stops to listen for the shrilling of a whistle, he retraced his steps as best he could. The hooting of a ship’s siren gave him a line and saved him from going off in the opposite direction. At last he almost gave up, then suddenly realised he was standing at the entrance to the alleyway that had originally brought him up from the warehouse.
Hardly daring to breathe, he started down the alley, his footsteps muffled by the fog and drowned by the medley of odd noises that permeated the air from a variety of sources.
The door to the boat-house was ajar, a fact that he did not notice until he was pushing it open. Then he became aware of a group of blue uniformed figures standing just inside, their voices a jumble of low-pitched sound.
Tern halted abruptly, staring aghast over the heads of the police at where the cruiser had been lying in its basin.
It was no longer there.
For an instant he was paralysed, not knowing whether to feel relief or a harsher kind of fear. He guessed without being told that the monster itself had taken the cruiser from its berth, slipping silently out into the darkness and mystery of the river. But had it taken Vivienne with it? Or was her body even now bobbing sluggishly on the tide-rip somewhere out there beneath the backdrop of fog?
A figure crowded through the door at his back. A hand landed firmly on his shoulder and spun him round, to peer up at the disgruntled face of Pete Duval.
“And you my old, old friend!” he snarled. “If it wasn’t for the fact that I love you as a brother, Jerry, I’d use a cosh on your bonehead skull!”
“Sorry about that,” grunted Tern miserably. “You can have my hunch, pal. The Monster, the Blue Peril, the half-man, half-robot, has been and gone. I know because I was talking to it less than half an hour ago. And it’s got Vivienne Conrad with it now!”
At the sound of the words the group of police closed in, a sergeant asking questions. He was quickly replaced by an inspector, also inquisitive. Tern found himself telling the whole story, and, to his surprise, being believed.
Within a few minutes the boat-house was seething. From the foggy background of the river came the throb of an engine and a river police launch sidled up. Beyond a quiet call between the men everything went off with smooth, almost silent efficiency. Tern was informed that no vessel could move either up or down stream without being checked and halted. And the fact that the cruiser could not have at the outside more than thirty minutes’ start made the river men confident of arresting it.
But Tern was frantic about the unfortunate girl on board. He tried to impress on the police what would happen to her if the vessel was caught. They did not seem to appreciate the awful danger in which she stood. No trace had been found of Brooking; he had simply vanished in the maze of fog-bound London.
Tern and Duval managed to insinuate themselves on one of the river police launches. As it nosed away from the quay Tern’s eyes fell on neatly coiled rope, grappling irons, all the various paraphernalia so often used by these men to recover bodies and bring them to shore. His heart sank at their dumb significance, and the mournful noises of the river did little to raise his spirits.
The launch was ten minutes out, heading downstream at what seemed to Tern a snail’s pace, when the radio operator called urgently to the sergeant in charge. Tern and Duval joined in, sensing important news. When they heard it, it was more important than either had expected.
Three miles farther down Brooking’s cruiser had been in collision with a tug and barge.
Tern groaned inwardly.
“The cruiser was travelling at a crazy speed considering conditions,” reported the operator. “According to Number Three Patrol it sank almost instantly.”
Tern licked his lips. “And the crew?” he said grimly. “The monster…?”
“Number Three report no trace,” came the answer. “But the master of the tug says he thought he saw something about
the size of a small man swimming for the shore.”
The sergeant looked down his nose gloomily. Then: “It looks as if we can chalk up the girl as missing, believed drowned,” he grunted. “Sorry, Tern; there’s nothing we can do beyond the routine search for the body when it drifts ashore.”
Duval clapped a hand on his shoulder, saying nothing.
“Drop me at the next landing place, will you, Sergeant?” he muttered. “Have to get a story in somehow.”
The sergeant nodded. Sirens hooted in the fog like a bevy of lost souls; the sullen splash of the river seemed to sound its requiem for the missing woman.
Tern and Duval stood silent in the cockpit, staring through the whorls of moisture.
Then the radio operator was busy again, taking down a message.
“They’ve picked up the girl!” he announced in a pleased tone. “The current carried her half a mile. She was in a lifebelt and was picked up by a lighter, wet but safe.’’
Never, Tern realised, had he been so glad to hear anything before. Vivienne’s safety had grown to be of immense importance to him. He acknowledged the fact without reserve, not shying from its implications in the least.
There followed a period of intense activity. Tern at last shook off Duval, joined Vivienne at the river police post to which she had been taken, and waited while the business of making statements and signing them was completed. He too, had to add his own quota of information, and by the time it was finished the police were ready enough to accept the fact of the Blue Peril’s existence. But a wide search had failed to discover the creature. It was still at large and a menace to any community.
At long last Tern was able to prize Vivienne loose from the police and take her to a quiet spot where they could both talk and eat at the same time.
“You know,” she said in a puzzled tone, “that horrible thing actually saved my life. It doesn’t seem possible, Jerry, but it did. When the cruiser crashed full tilt into that tug boat I was thrown clean over the side. The tide was running fast and I didn’t have a chance. I was being swept straight past the tug.”
He frowned. “But how did it save you?” he asked.
“I’m telling you. I caught a glimpse of it getting ready to dive overboard and then suddenly it stopped, turned round and picked up a lifebelt. Before I knew what was happening it had thrown it straight towards me. Then it dived and disappeared.”
“For an inhuman monster like that it was certainly a curious thing to do,” he mused. “But then, if what we think is right, it has your brother’s brain in that awful head. I suppose some trace of sympathetic feeling for you must exist in its thought reflexes. There’s no other answer.”
She shivered uncontrollably. “Oh, I hate to think of it at all!” she whispered. “If only all this had never happened! If only Gregory had had the strength of mind to break with Brooking right at the beginning instead of getting involved in murder for the sake of science!’’
He regarded her steadily. “We can’t alter the past,” he murmured. “The future’s a different thing. If I get a car will you come out of town for the rest of the day? Get away from all this? We could take a run out to the country. Get this fog out of our lungs, relax completely.” He broke off with a grin. “I’m unemployed, remember? Time’s my own, which is useful.”
She was genuinely delighted, falling in with the plan at once. Within an hour the two of them were threading their way through the suburbs, as free of care as if the Blue Peril had never existed except in their imagination. And it seemed too as if the elements were on their side. Hardly had they cleared London before fog thinned and lifted, to let down a pale sun on the autumn brown leaves of the countryside.
Tern put himself out to take the girl’s mind completely off the nightmare through which she had recently lived, and the fact that he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations gave him considerable pleasure. But at the back of his own mind was the knowledge that Brooking’s hideous creation was still very much alive, a fact that was brought home to them forcibly when they learnt that another savage killing had taken place during the afternoon.
A man, it appeared, had seen and attempted to stop the monster. He had died, his skull crushed by a tremendous blow.
Tern tried to keep the facts from Vivienne, but she too had been listening to the telling of them in a small country pub where they had stopped shortly after six. Her eyes were troubled again, and the colour went from her cheeks. Even the pleasure they had found in each other’s company was wiped out and almost forgotten.
“Take me home, Jerry,” she whispered. “It—it seems wrong to be out like this when that dreadful thing is killing people again. What can it hope to gain?”
“A sort of distorted revenge on the human race,” he said. “You heard what it told us? That’s its main object.”
She sighed. “Let’s be going,” she said.
He wished he could change her mind, but she was adamant. Driving slowly through the dusk, they started back towards town. Vivienne was quiet, subdued; Tern himself uneasy. He must try to make her forget, he thought. She must be made to realise that this thing was impersonal now as far as they were concerned. Their part in it was over and done; the police were better equipped to deal with the ravages of the Blue Peril.
Presently he stopped the car in a side lane and brought out cigarettes. Vivienne accepted one, watching his face in the flare of the lighter flame. And behind the worry in her eyes he read something else. Their cigarettes were never lit. At one moment they were staring at each other; the next she was crushed against him, half-crying, a child in the dark.
“It’ll be all right, won’t it?” she breathed.
“Of course it will,” he murmured, his lips against her forehead. “The only thing that matters is us. From now on it’s you and I, Vivienne. This curse that entered our lives brought us both together. It’ll leave us together. Nothing can alter that, sweet.”
She drew a shuddering breath. “I—I think I’d like my cigarette now, please,” she whispered. “I feel as if I want to stay here forever.”
He grinned in the darkness, fumbling again for his lighter. “There are nicer places than this,” he said quietly. “Here.” He flicked the lighter again, watching hungrily as she bent her head forward, the cigarette between her lips.
Then the car door behind her was wrenched open and the bulbous head of the Blue Peril thrust into view.
“Don’t move, Tern,” it said. “There are still several reasons why I want you both.”
CHAPTER 7
COURTSHIP DEFERRED
Caught completely off his guard, Tern could do nothing. The space inside the car was not roomy enough for any heroics, and as Vivienne stifled a scream he guessed that the monster was pressing a gun in her back. He himself was cramped by the steering wheel, so that he could only sit where he was and stare in a horrified fashion at the grinning visage of the Thing that had crept upon them from the night.
“You show surprise at my arrival, Tern?” it said. “No, Vivienne, don’t flinch whenever I speak. In some small measure you have already experienced my high regard for you. You would only suffer if this young man—who I am certain is humanly attached to you—tried some foolish act of heroism. Such an act would be little more than your own passport to eternity.”
“How—how did you find us?” she stammered faintly.
Tern gulped. “Yes,” he said. “Tell us!”
The monster made no immediate answer, instead moving to one side and opening the rear door of the car. Before they realised what it intended it was sitting on the back seat with its enormous ugly head between them. And the gun was in evidence just as Tern had guessed.
“I told you once before that I am endowed with a strange ubiquity of knowledge,” it said. The harsh, mechanical tones of its voice were softened slightly by a cynical banter. “There is nothing I do not know if I put my mind to it—Conrad’s mind, perhaps I should say. You have Brooking to thank for that, though I doubt if he ever
realised what he was doing when he energised my frame and brought me to life.
“However, that is beside the point…The main fact is that I can concentrate on something and know all about it. Hence, Tern, when I began to feel the need for human company again, I merely thought about you for a few minutes. There was not much difficulty in reaching you once I knew where you were.”
Tern frowned. “But look here, damn it,” he said, “we haven’t been parked in this lane more than ten minutes! By the news we had you were miles away—committing another vile murder!”
The monster chuckled. “That was several hours ago,” it murmured. “I ought to have explained that I knew where you would be at a given time, which allowed me long enough to arrive here in a stolen car now parked among the trees over there. Have I answered your queries satisfactorily? If so we can proceed.”
Tern swallowed again and wondered what the devil to do. He had never felt so utterly helpless in his life before, and the sensation was not a pleasant one. As for Vivienne, the little he could see of her expression in the gloom revealed stark despair. She sat there at his side, shrinking from the nearness of the creature behind her, staring beseechingly at Tern.
He reached out a hand and took her fingers, tightening his own on them in an effort to reassure her. Her hand was icy cold.
“What do you mean by proceed?” Tern inquired. “Haven’t you done enough damage already? What hellish power drives you like this?”
“The power of hate, my friend. Hate against you and all your kind; hate against the man who created me through no fault of my own.”
“But why?” He was frankly puzzled. “If you have the power of thought and reason surely you can work out some compromise? Why make the whole human race suffer for the fact that you’ve been brought to life? What have we done to you for instance?”
