Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Halliday had stuck here, doing his job, making no complaints or excuses, always aware of the horrible, soul-numbing danger he was facing.

  WARD cursed and buried his face in his trembling hands. With bitter shame he recalled his jeering remarks to Halliday about his nervous habit of removing his glasses.

  God! Three years on this hellish base and the only sign a nervous habit of fiddling with his glasses. Stark raving madness would have been the effect on any other person Ward could imagine.

  At that instant he despised himself more than he had ever despised any human being in his life.

  And he knew that the worst punishment that would ever be meted to him, would be the mere act of living and being able to think—to remember.

  With feverish eyes he glared about the room. A small leaden cask was set apart from the other equipment and it was marked with three xxx’s, the indication of high explosive contents.

  Ward dropped to his knees and pried open the lid of the small cask. It was filled with neat rows of U-235 pellets, hardly an inch in diameter. He picked up one in each hand and then stood up and walked to the door.

  He was beyond thought or reason. He knew he was going to his death and he felt nothing but a numb sense of anticipation. He knew that in dying he would not expiate the crime of cowardice he had committed. Nothing would ever erase the stigma of that shame. A thousand deaths could not do that.

  He did not actually think these things. His mind was wrapped in a fog of blind instinct. There was something he must do—do immediately. That was as far as his mind would go.

  The kitchen and front room of the small building were empty and the door leading to the outside was open. The wild raging storm of the monsoon blew in the door, whipping papers into the air, resounding against the walls with a booming roar.

  Ward strode across the room, bracing himself against the blast of the wind. He stepped through the doorway and the full force of the wind almost bent him backward, but he moved on, fighting his way forward.

  After six feet, the building was lost in the grayness. He was again alone in a wild howling world of horror and death.

  Then he heard the rasping noise of the things directly ahead of him, and an instant later he was able dimly to make out their weaving shapes in the swirling mists of the storm.

  They were coming toward him.

  WITH a grim exultation pounding in his temples, Ward hurled a pellet of U-235 directly into their midst. The thunderous reverberations of the explosion rocked the ground under his feet. A terrific blast of air that dwarfed the raging turbulence of the monsoon roared about his head.

  He staggered back, almost falling.

  When he could see again, he made out a great hole in the ranks of the things moving toward him.

  His laugh was a wild cry in the fury of the night.

  “Damn you!” he shouted.

  His arm whipped back and the second pellet crashed into the serried ranks of the deadly rasping creatures.

  Something grasped his ankle as the second pellet exploded. He fell backward, striking the ground hard. A hand grabbed his and then, miraculously, incredibly, Halliday was pulling him to his feet, jerking him toward the building.

  They stumbled through the door together. Ward fell to the floor as Halliday wheeled and slammed the door, throwing the automatic bolts with the same motion.

  Halliday knelt beside Ward.

  “Good work,” he said huskily. “They were holding me. I don’t know what they were planning. Those bombs blew them into little pieces. Luckily I got through the blast all right.” He gripped Ward’s arm suddenly. “You came through too, son.”

  “No,” Ward said dully. “I didn’t. I ran out on you. I’m a fool, a yellow fool.”

  “A coward wouldn’t have come back,” Halliday said quietly. “We’re going to lick this job together, from now on. We’ve found a weapon to use against the Raspers. I never thought of high explosives.”

  He grinned suddenly and the tightness was leaving his mouth. “It doesn’t seem so terrible when you’ve got something to fight back with.”

  Ward looked up at Halliday and a faint smile touched his own lips. “Someone to fight with, means a lot, too,” he said. He suddenly grinned. “You’ve lost your glasses.”

  “I won’t miss them,” Halliday said. “I didn’t need them. I wore them to give me something to do, that’s all. But we’re going to have plenty to do, now.”

  Ward swallowed with difficulty. He knew that in his wild, thoughtless act of heroism he hadn’t redeemed himself. Redemption would come from a lifetime of playing the game the way men like Halliday did. But the chance was there for him, and he was glad that he could start immediately.

  “Whatever you say,” he said. He grinned, and added, “—boss.”

  THE GHOST THAT HAUNTED HITLER[*]

  First published in the December 1942 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  Terror walked out of Lidice on invisible feet, and Heydrich, the Hangman died. From that day on fear stalked the Gestapo, and a phantom of vengeance became famed throughout Europe as . . .

  CHAPTER I

  A GUTTERING candle flamed in the dank darkness of the cellar casting grotesque shadows against the limestone walls.

  Three men sat at a table in that cellar.

  The man at the head of the table leaned forward and for an instant his face was strikingly lighted by the flickering candle.

  His face was lean and pale. The jaw-line was sharp and hard. A thin nose jutted over a slight blonde mustache. The eyes of the man were only mirrored pools of blackness.

  He glanced down at the map lying before him on the table.

  “Every detail has been arranged,” he said. His voice was softly cautious. “He will be here, in Prague, tomorrow.”

  The man on his left leaned forward tensely. The candle-light caught the blazing glints in his black eyes, the almost savage determination in his grimly clamped jaw. His thick fingers gripped the edge of the table.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered. “Can we trust our information?”

  The man opposite the speaker, a heavy-shouldered, dark-browed giant, nodded thoughtfully.

  “Can we be sure?” he growled. “We will have only one chance.” His eyes turned to the man at the head of the table. “One slip now will ruin everything.”

  The man at the head of the table glanced briefly at the two men and a faint, ironic smile brushed his thin lips.

  “Yes, we can trust this information.”

  He bent over the map deliberately. The candle light penetrated the shadowy caverns of his eyes as he leaned forward, transforming them into yellow pools of strange luminance. There was something haunting about those green-yellow eyes, something about their weird glow in the darkness that was chilling. They were the eyes of a creature of darkness, the eyes of a hunter.

  “We can trust this information,” he said. “Underground Intelligence from Berlin transmitted it to me. Heydrich will be in Prague tomorrow.”

  The dark-browed giant stood up suddenly, mighty fists clenching.

  “The Hangman!” he grated. “His men took my wife, my child—”

  The man at the head of the table took his arm and drew him back to his seat.

  “I know,” he said softly. “But the Hangman’s hour of reckoning draws closer with each tick of the clock. Now you have both studied this map of the city, and the route Heydrich’s car will take. Are you sure of what you must do?”

  The two men nodded silently. “Excellent. I will be on hand. When your—ah—errand is completed I will give you your instructions for leaving the city. I think that is all, gentlemen. Good luck.”

  The man on his left drummed his fingers nervously on the top of the table. His smouldering black eyes were worried.

  “You say you will be there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t. The neighborhood will be alive with Gestapo police seconds after we have done our work! It will direct suspicion at you if
you are discovered in the vicinity.”

  “I’m afraid that can’t be helped.”

  “But you are one of our few links with the Reich authorities. You are worth a hundred of us. As long as they believe you a renegade American and admit you to their councils, you are invaluable to the underground movement. Nothing must happen to you.”

  “I don’t intend letting anything happen to me,” the man at the head of the table said. A whimsical smile touched his face but his yellow-green eyes did not reflect that smile. “Even so, I’d risk quite a bit to be present at Herr Heydrich’s final performance. When he departs for his eternal and—ah—warm reward I want to be there to raise a silent cheer.”

  He stood up slowly, a tall thin figure with the esthetic features of a scholar and the yellow-green eyes of a jungle hunter.

  “I’m afraid we must consider the matter settled,” he said gently. “Au revoir, until tomorrow, my comrades.”

  With a slight smile he turned and moved silently toward the cellar exit.

  After a moment one of the men at the table pinched out the candle and darkness, close and final, settled pall-like over the damp cellar . . .

  AT FIVE o’clock on the afternoon of May twenty-eighth, a German staff car entered the outskirts of Prague and followed one of the main boulevards leading to the center of the city.

  The car was driven by an impassive German officer and the sole occupant of the tonneau was a thin, loose-lipped man with pale, fretful features and cold shifting eyes. He wore the insignia of a Reich Upper Group Leader and his narrow chest was covered with medals and decorations.

  As the car approached an intersection a stocky black-haired man on a bicycle swung out into the boulevard and pedaled leisurely along the street, directly in front of the staff car.

  The chauffeur applied the brakes, slowing the car. He sounded the horn impatiently, swearing under his breath.

  The man in the rear of the car looked up, his cold eyes snapping. A muscle twitched nervously in his cheek.

  “What is the matter?” he barked.

  The chauffeur gestured helplessly at the slowly moving bicyclist.

  “I am sorry, sir, but this fool ahead on the cycle is blocking the street. Perhaps he is deaf.” He sounded the horn again, pressing angrily with the flat of his hand.

  The officer in the rear of the car leaned back against the cushioned seat. A smile played about his loose lips and his unnaturally pale face lighted with a strange eagerness.

  “How unfortunate for him,” he murmured. “Run him down.”

  “But, excellency—”

  “Silence!” The single word cracked like a leash about the chauffeur’s ears. “You have your orders!”

  Red-faced, the chauffeur jammed his foot on the accelerator, but as the heavy car started to gain momentum, the bicyclist suddenly swerved to one side, leaving the road clear for the staff car.

  The officer in the rear of the car cursed softly and his flabby lips twisted in a pout.

  “The stupid fellow has saved his life,” he muttered. He crossed his booted leg nervously. “And for what? I would have been doing him a favor by crushing him beneath the wheels of the car. What can life possibly mean to such a senseless, inferior clod? Only a succession of hungry days and miserable nights stretching on forever. He is helpless to help himself or to hurt others. He lives without power, without effect, without importance. Better not to live.”

  As the car drew abreast of the man on the bicycle he glanced idly at the rider. Boiling black eyes met his for one chilling instant. Eyes set in a hard, tensely determined face, eyes without fear, eyes that gleamed like flashing sword points.

  The officer saw the man on the bicycle reach into the folds of his coarse jacket and draw out a round, black object; and he suddenly screamed madly at his chauffeur.

  A MAN on the opposite side of the street, a dark-browed giant of a man, stepped suddenly from between two buildings. He drew a gun from his pocket and sighted deliberately at the figure in the tonneau of the staff car. His gun barked five times.

  Almost at the same instant the arm of the cyclist flashed up and down, and a small black ball smashed against the hood of the car.

  A reverberating explosion shattered the air.

  The car rocked from the force of the blast. The chauffeur fell forward over the wheel and the machine careened madly over the sidewalk and smashed its hood into the glass showcase of a small shop.

  The man on the bicycle pedaled swiftly across the street to the man who had fired the shots into the car.

  “Did you get him?” he snapped.

  “I think so. Come, we must hurry.”

  “Not yet.” The man who had thrown the bomb shot an anxious glance up and down the street. “He said he would be here to give us directions.”

  “Maybe he has failed. Something might have happened to him.”

  “He will not fail us.”

  Already people were appearing on the quiet street, emerging from the neat homes and small shops that lined the boulevard. Two men were running toward the wreckage of the car.

  A cart with a load of hay turned onto the boulevard from a side street and the driver stopped the horses near the wrecked car. The driver clambered down without haste. He was wearing frayed overalls and a straw hat and his thin features were set in dull, stoic lines.

  The man with the bicycle gripped his huge companion’s arm as the tall figure of the driver strode toward them.

  “He has not failed us!” he whispered tensely.

  “What do you mean?”

  The overalled figure stopped in front of them.

  “Please accept my congratulations,” he said. “You have done an excellent afternoon’s work. As a reward I would suggest a quiet drive through the country. And—ah—I wouldn’t let anything stop you from taking your reward immediately.”

  The speaker lifted his straw hat slowly and the last rays of the sun struck lights in his strange, yellow-green eyes. The faces of the two men gleamed. “We knew you’d come,” the dark-featured giant said huskily. “Where shall we go?”

  The man in overalls glanced lazily across the street at the wreckage of the car, noting the gathering of men and women and listening to the growing tumult spreading along the boulevard.

  “If I were you,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d drive slowly away from this turbulent place and find some quiet secluded village and remain there. You’ll find the peace and quiet good for your souls. For that purpose I can’t think of a better place than the lazy, pleasant village of Lidice.”

  “Lidice?”

  “Yes, they’re expecting you. Now get started. At any moment the genial gentlemen from the Gestapo will arrive and in their charming fashion begin the questioning of witnesses.”

  “But you?”

  The yellow-green eyes glinted with amusement.

  “When the Gestapo police arrive I shall be the only one present with an accurate description of the assassins, who, I shall swear, were eight in number and possessed of hairy, ringed tails. Now, go quickly. God be with you.”

  CHAPTER II

  ON THE morning of June fifth, there was an undercurrent of suppressed excitement and tension in the offices of the Reich’s Minister of Occupation, Marshal Wilhelm von Bock.

  The tension was not localized however, in the imposing white-façaded building that Marshal von Bock had appropriated from the Czech government, but it was evident in all parts of Prague, reflected in the submissive eyes of women and the sullen, bitter eyes of men.

  The death of Reinhardt Heydrich, the protector of Czechoslovakia, had been announced the day before, and already three hundred and fifty innocent men and women of Prague had been executed in wholesale retaliation.

  In the imposing inner sanctum of Reich’s Minister von Bock, far from the bloody street scenes, far from the tragic-eyed men and women of Prague, this matter of reprisal was being discussed coldly, deliberately.

  Marshal von Bock was pacing slowly in front of his ma
gnificent mahogany desk. On the wall behind the desk an immense swastika flag hung from the ceiling to the floor. The marshal was a short, gross man with a distended stomach and heavy, oily jowls. In his elaborately emblazoned uniform he looked ridiculously like a strutting pigeon; but there was nothing ridiculous about the marshal’s pale, ruthless eyes and thick, cruel lips.

  “This affair,” he was saying in his soft, slightly lisping voice, “presents an interesting psychological problem, do you not agree Herr Faber?”

  He paused, hands clasped behind his back, and peered down at the figure sprawled comfortably in one of the room’s thickly padded leather chairs.

  Michael Faber glanced up at the marshal and smiled faintly. His lean face was tranquilly relaxed and his yellow-green eyes were sleepily veiled.

  “But, of course, Herr Minister,” he drawled. “If you continue the execution of innocent citizens we shall soon know exactly how far a people may be goaded. That should be valuable clinical information if any of us are here to appreciate it.”

  Marshal von Bock folded his pudgy arms and shook his head despairingly.

  “My good Herr Faber,” he said woefully, “you still have your curious American respect for the common people, do you not? After the things you have seen in Nazi countries you should realize that the people are but a helpless, unimportant mass of atoms. Those who guide and direct that mass of atoms are the only important human beings. You worry about the people of Prague, of Czechoslovakia revolting? Bah! That is ridiculous. We can grind them to powder under our heels and they will only whine for pity.”

  MICHAEL FABER lit his pipe and stared thoughtfully at the glowing match as smoke swirled around his head. His hunter’s eyes caught the reflection of the match and gleamed warmly under lowered lids.

  “What you say, marshal,” he said, “is undoubtedly true. But what happened to Heydrich can happen, one day, to any of us.”