The other envelope, which was unsealed, contained a manuscript in a foreign language and is now in the Property Room at Dilham.
In the two weeks since the alleged suicide, despite all my efforts to trace Robert Krug, no evidence has come to light to support the hope that he may still be alive. This, plus the fact that the clothing found in the cave has since been identified by Mrs. White as being that which Krug was wearing the night before his disappearance, has determined me to request that my report be placed in the "unsolved" file and that Robert Krug be listed as missing.
Sgt. J. T. Miller,
Dilham,
York.
7 Aug., 1952
Note:
Sir,
Do you wish me to send a copy of the manuscript at Annex 'A'—as requested of Mrs. White by Krug—to the Secretary of the North-East Coal-Board?
Inspector I. L. Ianson,
Yorkshire County Constabulary,
Radcar, YORKS.
Dear Sgt. Miller,
In answer to your note of the 7th.
Take no further action on the Krug case. As you suggest, I have had the man posted as missing, believed a suicide. As for his document; well, the man was either mentally unbalanced or a monumental hoaxer; possibly a combination of both! Regardless of the fact that certain things in his story are matters of indisputable fact, the majority of the thing appears to be the product of a diseased mind.
Meanwhile I await your progress-report on that other case. I refer to the baby found in the church pews at Eely-on-the-Moor last June. How are you going about tracing the mother?
WHEN MORNING COMES by Elizabeth Fancett
The Right Honourable Sir William Wellborn smiles to himself as he rifles through his papers. They rustle softly in the darkness. He looks around the empty House—home of the law-makers, society's protectors, the orderers of good. He is proud to be their leader. But then, it was his birthright. All the Wellborns had been law-makers, leaders, men of vision.
He had been particularly pleased with today. The House had been more than usually impressed with his oratory, his qualities of leadership had been never more apparent or appreciated. There were still the old die-hards, of course, clinging to their decrepit ideas of democracy. But things were changing rapidly. He was changing them. Life was changing, the old orders passing. And his Bill would go through. He was sure of that.
He frowns, remembering something, shrugs it away. He switches off the small light over his desk. The shadows crawl close, night deepens. He listens to the dark silence.
What? For a moment then . . . he'd thought . . . Just so! He'd thought—imagined—as he'd imagined it before. He was tired, he would go home. He hesitates. Or should he stay and think it out; now, while it was still fresh in his mind, and then forget it? He switches on the light again.
Let's see now, what had he been saying when he'd heard—thought he'd heard—something? It had been somewhere towards the end of his speech—he couldn't exactly remember where. Was it before or after his summing up? Or had it been—
He sits down, trying to remember . . .
The House had been hushed, tense, hanging on his words . . .
"We all know that the Abortion Act is not working as it should. And, as it stands, it never will! Most of the medical profession, and the Church—though, thank God, the Church carries little weight these days—continue to oppose and obstruct it in every way. My Bill is designed precisely to overcome this opposition. Abortion should be made legally binding on all doctors; not only to ensure abortions for all who wish them, but also, where circumstances justify it, to enforce in cases where those forbidden to procreate insist on breaking the compulsory contraception law!"
There had been a general murmur in the House, a stirring of uneasiness.
Had it been then? No. It had come later, when the House was hushed again, all eyes and minds fastened on him as he concluded his speech.
"We must prevent irresponsible and selfish parents from bringing into our world the unfit and the surplus human beings who can contribute nothing to our society except further problems and disasters. Mankind must be thinned out before the best are crowded out, like weeds crowd out the good plants. Is that what we want—a world of weeds?"
It had been then that he'd heard it—no, thought he'd heard it. Like a ripple in his brain, a shadow moving across his mind—a voice, a word, repeated once . . . twice . . . softly: "Herod," it had said. "Herod. Herod."
He had looked over to where his only strong opponent sat, the Bishop Duval. Duval was the only churchman left in the Common House of Law Makers, tolerated chiefly for his age and his long standing as a member. But he still had power in the Church. Duval, he remembered, had called him that very word in the early stages of the Bill.
"Herod!" he had thundered out at him. "Slaughterer of innocents! Slayer of the unborn!"
But today, Duval had been strangely silent. As if he'd given up the fight, or as if—
A slight breeze murmurs through the high window. The great curtains flap. A small sound, but startling. Wellborn is startled, then angry with himself. He was a fool to stay here, remembering! And yet . . .
He remembers the Grey Man, sitting alone in the visitors' gallery, as he had every day throughout the debate. An old man, grey-suited, grey-haired, grey-faced. He knew him? No. And yet something familiar about the old man . . . his face . . .
He sits in the darkness.
Remembering.
Remembering the Grey Man.
Duval groans softly as he recalls the day—the dreadful day.
He should have spoken up, tried once more to stem this terrible tide of power. But he had been silent throughout the day's proceedings. Today, with this infamous Bill nearing its final stages, he had been voiceless, letting evil be done, while that arrogant Wellborn rushed through yet another Bill of murder!
He groans aloud. He was an old man, worn out. He was a broken voice crying in the terrible wilderness, an ancient reed bent low by the icy winds of change.
But yesterday, he had tried . . .
"The House well knows my views on abortion!" he had thundered. "And on every other law this glorified social welfare worker has forced—or tried to force—upon this House and our nation! I have sat heartsick, helpless, despairing, while he has put before you evil upon evil. Selective marriage, wedlock forbidden to the unfit—you baulked at that—but what did he offer in its place? Compulsory contraception for the so-called unfit! And you passed that. You allowed abortion by consent, because he pushed it. You refused its abolition, because he pleaded for it—despite irrefutable evidence that the medical profession and the country as a whole were against it and considered it evil. Now—compulsory abortion! State murder! Are you going to allow that?"
He had looked around the silent House.
"How many of us," he had asked, "here in this House, in this world, would be alive if abortion had prevailed in our parents' day? We were allowed to be born, conceived in love, permitted to live, to grow. Will you deny to others what we ourselves were given—the precious gift of life—the gift to be?"
He might have swayed them then, if he'd remained calm. But for a moment his eyes had met Wellborn's, saw the contempt in them, for himself and for all he represented.
"Can't you see"—he had thundered out at them "can't any of you see the way this man's power is growing? What next will he ask for? I'll tell you what next—euthanasia! First, death by relatives' consent, then death by compulsion. He won't be content with saying who shall come into this world, he'll want to say when we shall go out of it. When to kill off the old, the feeble, like sick dogs, regardless of their right to live out their God-given span. And it won't stop there! He'll despatch anyone—anyone—who doesn't fit in with social or world requirements, who makes a mess of his blueprint for that mythical, marvellous world his mind envisages.
"In the plain speaking words of which the Right Honourable Sir William Wellborn is so fond—if he had been aborted over forty y
ears ago this world would have gone a long way to becoming the finer place he wishes it to be!"
He had turned then on Wellborn.
"In the Name of God and all creation, who—what—do you think you are? You're not God! You're not even a man!"
There had been uproar then in the House, voices protesting, a few approving.
"Order! Order!" cried the Speaker. "I will have order!"
Instantly, the House had quietened. Not because of the Speaker, but for Wellborn, who stood there, magnificently unperturbed by the fracas, quietly smiling.
Duval shudders at the memory, sees again that striking figure, so sure, so confident in his power. He hears his voice, calm, cool, ignoring Duval's outburst, ignoring him.
"Pass the law to fit the circumstances," he had said in his firm clear voice. "This you have always done. Now we need this law. We might never have to enforce it, but we need it. Yes, it is hard. But what is our alternative? Is it not better to do the deed before rather than after birth? We can—we must—prevent more illegal births to those forbidden to procreate. We can—we must—prevent births of the unfit; the malformed, the idiots, the uneducable. We can—we must—stem the tide of surplus human beings who threaten to engulf the rapidly dwindling spaces of this earth.
"This is mankind's sole remedy, his long-term defense, and ultimately his glory!"
Wellborn's hated voice bites deep into his mind. How to stop him? How to—?
He hears a light rapping on his door. Who would call so late?
"Come!" he says.
The door opens. Duval stares at his visitor, trying to place him. Then as old eyes meet, gnarled hands grip in greeting. Duval has remembered.
"Morney! It is Morney! Sit down, old friend, sit down! There is much to be said between us."
The Grey Man sits.
Impatiently, Wellborn puts the papers in his case, closes it. He would go home. Another hard day tomorrow. Anyway, this was ridiculous. He hadn't heard a thing—not a whisper, not a sound—but the echo of his own voice when he had finished speaking.
He frowns, not liking the thought engendered. His own voice? His—conscience? Nonsense! Heart and mind, he is for this Bill. It is his baby. He smiles at the apt phase. It had been he who had pushed through the original Bill. He had always advocated it, fought for it, upheld it whenever it seemed threatened with abolition.
He grins suddenly in the darkness. Was he not known by the press as 'Abortion Bill'? He was pleased with the tag. And he was keeping up with the family tradition. Yes, no doubt about it—he was a born leader, and the House knew it. His grin deepens. Not bad for a man of his years, for one who—
He tenses, listening. Then . . . just then . . .? He shakes himself angrily. He had heard nothing—neither then, nor before! It had been—well—an echo of Duval's outburst perhaps, lingering somewhere in the chambers of his own mind. He mustn't let that confounded churchman get him—
His thoughts cease suddenly. Distinctly, clearly, he hears it. It is the same voice, it whispers out to him from the crawling shadows, from the thick blackness of the vast, empty House. Now, as before, a word—repeated once . . . twice . . . softly . . .
"Herod," it says. "Herod. Herod."
"And that's the story of the Wellborns to date," says Duval grimly. "True to pattern, eh?"
"How did he get such power?" Morney's grey eyes are grave, troubled. "One man—how does one man like him get such power? And in so short a time!"
"God knows!" groans Duval. "It just seemed to happen, that's all. Six years ago there was no Wellborn on the political scene. Suddenly, there he was. And soon, a good many people who would have been—were not!"
"Where did he come from?" asks Morney.
"Tasmania, I presume. Soon after he was born, his mother took him there. I wish to God he'd stayed there, died there!" Duval looks curiously at Morney. "But you know more about him than I do. You brought him into the world."
Morney's face becomes greyer, his eyes avoid Duval's. He says slowly: "That's why I've come to see you." He pauses, forcing himself to look at Duval.
"What if I were to tell you—" Morney's voice thickens—"that the Right Honourable Sir William Wellborn—does not exist?"
The small light is a comfortless speck in the enveloping gloom. But he is glad of it. He can barely see the great doors through which he must pass to leave the Chamber. They seem a long way from him.
He is not afraid. Merely curious. But he is glad of the light. It helps him to think, to reason this out. He hadn't heard it—not really, not consciously . . .
Again the voice: "Herod."
And again: "Herod. Herod."
A rush of rage overcomes him. He wheels angrily, calling out to the darkness.
"Duval, is that you?"
Silence. Nothing.
"How's it fixed, Duval? Hidden microphones . . . in the rafters, behind the curtains . . . the visitors' gallery?" He laughs harshly, mockingly. "A little old, aren't you, for such damn silly tricks! How did you get them up there, for God's sake? Or perhaps your angels helped you! Trying to make me believe it's heavenly voices—voices of vengeance, eh? Eh, Duval?"
He feels better, now that he knows. Of course it was Duval—though how he worked it God knows!—playing a senile trick, a last desperate measure to scare him. Scare him—Wellborn! A ludicrous ruse, the old fool! When the House heard about this, Duval would be finished.
But a thought still nags at him. How was it worked? A recording, timed for periodic 'haunting'? Or was Duval here, in the House . . . somewhere . . . in the darkness?
His voice—raw, harsh, tears at the silence.
"It won't work, churchman! This is Wellborn you're dealing with . . . 'Abortion Bill' . . . remember? To hell with you and your damned tricks! To hell with you and your damned morals!"
Silence. Nothing.
"That's my voice, Duval, my voice! Do you hear? This House is filled with my voice, with my laws! With me!"
He stops abruptly, appalled at his own screeching. He listens. Nothing. Not even his own breathing can he hear. The air is dead, the darkness dead.
For the first time in his life, he is suddenly, icily afraid.
He begins to walk—unsteadily, gropingly, towards the doors, holding on to the seat edges as he goes.
Quarter of the way . . . slowly . . . slowly . . . Now by the Speaker's rostrum . . . a little further . . . He pauses. The visitors' gallery is high above him—where the Grey Man sat today . . . and yesterday . . .
The grey face moves across his mind, like a half-formed vision, as seen through eyes that sleep—but do not sleep. His thoughts race ahead of his heartbeat, until his heart knocks louder on his mind. Not far from the doors . . . Now! He reaches out to touch them. He stops. Is stopped. A barrier before and around him. Nothing that he can see or feel or know—but it's there, in the darkness.
The fear grows in him. He stands stricken, in a limbo of terror, in a black void, in a cage of nothingness that is a steel trap around him.
He is cold, yet sweat pours from him like rivulets from a rain-drenched tree. He is a tree—not a man—a living being capable of rational thought, self-governed, moved by his own will! He, the maker of laws, was subject now to other laws to which he gave no credence. His mind struggles, fighting to surface, until gradually conscious thought returns.
"Wait!" his mind says. "This will pass . . . just a while . . . Wait!"
It was something in him, he decides. He alone was responsible for this temporary paralysis. Self-hypnosis—something like that. It was nothing he could not control. If he gave it thought, he could countermand it. He would!
His will says: Move! Walk! His mind demands it. But his body does not obey.
Move! Screams his mind. He tries to echo the scream in his throat, but his mouth will not move either. He sweats, struggles, and while he struggles, his mind and will straining against alien forces, the silence breaks in a wave of whispered sounds. From the great doomed ceiling, from the high corners
of the vast chamber, growing louder, nearer—one voice, one cry: "Herod! Herod! Herod!"
The great doors are flung open. Light from the outer chamber rushes in upon him. Instantly, he feels that he is free. He stumbles towards the open doors, almost into the arms of the astonished caretaker.
"Sir William! I heard shouting . . . I thought—Sir William, what is it? Are you ill?"
He brushes the man aside, hurries from the gloomy Chamber, through the reassuringly lighted outer room, into the fresh, clear, open wideness of the night.
Morney quails before Duval's grave, shocked eyes.
"I know it was wrong," he says, "but she begged me to do it. She was afraid how her husband would react if his son, his heir, were deformed."
"Deformed?"
"The chances were high. She'd been taking certain drugs, without my knowledge."
"So you refused it life because it might be deformed?" Duval's voice is stern, uncompromising. He studies Morney's sad, grey face. Then, more gently, he asks: "And was it?"
"No . . . at least . . . not very much." Morney's voice is unsteady. "The left foot had just three toes."
"Dear God!" groans Duval. "To lose one's life—for so little!"
"A small defect, yes," says Morney. "But it was too much for a Wellborn—the high born! She considered the abortion was justified."
"And you?"
The Year's Best Horror Stories 1 Page 4
