Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Then, as though to discredit the astronomers who had predicted with cold mathematical certainty that it would do otherwise, the planetoid changed course. Incredibly, inexplicably, it swung directly toward Earth.

  The phenomenon was in utter defiance of all laws governing the motions of celestial bodies. Science was unable to account for it. Some powerful force obviously had acted upon the tremendous mass of the planetoid to cause its change in direction, but the identity of this force remained unknown.

  The space ship faction among the planetoid theorists was briefly triumphant. The shift proved, so they insisted, that the planetoid contained intelligent passengers. Earth was about to be visited by members of an alien race.

  Panic swept Earth’s millions as a collision with the planetoid now seemed inevitable. Scientists pointed out that the object was too small to cause world-wide destruction. Earth might reel slightly under the blow, but would continue on its way more or less intact. However, if the planetoid struck a thickly inhabited part of a continent, such as the Eastern United States, devastation would result for hundreds of miles around the point of impact. The scene would be ravaged by fire and molten rock. There would be terrific storms and earthquakes, or, depending on the region, volcanic eruptions and vast tidal waves. The area immediately under the planetoid—an area some four-hundred miles in diameter—would be ground into complete oblivion.

  The all-important question was, where would the planetoid strike?

  Closer, the huge projectile drew—ever closer. It became clearly visible in the sky, a second moon. And with its approach a paralysis of fear gripped Earth. The bitter struggle between the Western Allies and the Slav-Asian Powers slowed to a stop. Of what use to seek victory, when in all likelihood only extinction might reward the victor? Frightened mobs fled great cities everywhere. Other mobs abandoned themselves to alcoholic or religious frenzy.

  It was upon this chaotic stage setting that Everett Stonecrest had entered to make his epic declaration.

  Careful preparations evidently had been made in advance. At the cost of what was reported to be a small fortune, Stonecrest had negotiated with two major radio networks to have his broadcast relayed on a nation-wide hook-up from his home in Lake Grove. This was the first hint given that Stonecrest possessed transmitting equipment of his own. Subsequently arrangements were made between the net-works and certain eager sponsors whereby any and all of Stonecrest’s future broadcasts would be relayed without expense on his part.

  Framed in solemn Biblical terms, the announcement had been short. Stonecrest claimed to have been given the power to save the Earth, or important parts of it, from destruction. He would prove this, he said, by halting the planetoid—which he named the Celestial Hammer—in its tracks. The proof would appear in a matter of hours.

  And before the ensuing storm of skepticism and derision had time to reach its full proportions, Stonecrest’s proof had made its appearance. The Celestial Hammer, which had been plunging toward Earth beyond the power of any mere words to halt, again changed course. It had swung into a stable orbit—where it now remained.

  And as if to top the absolutely untoppable, Dunn thought, he himself was now speeding toward what was in effect Stonecrest’s back door. What sort of a welcome would he receive?

  A soft voice had brought him this far. There was still a long way to go . . .

  PEERING down the road, he saw a large sprawling house of gray stone taking shape through intervening trees. And parked at one side of the road, in line with the house, were several cars. A group of men were visible nearby. It appeared that others also had thought of Stonecrest’s back door.

  Dunn slowed the coupe. He thumbed open the glove compartment and lifted out his .45 automatic. The weapon had not been taken from him by his assailant of the previous night, perhaps having been overlooked in the darkness. He shoved the gun into a hip pocket.

  He covered the remaining distance seated quietly behind the wheel. He felt the eyes of the group on him, searching and curious, as he added the coupe to the queue of cars and climbed out. An argument of some sort seemed to have been in progress, but now there was momentary silence.

  Two of the watching men stood with their backs to a gate in a new-looking woven steel fence topped with barbed wire. They wore outdoor-type clothing, jackets and khaki sport hats, in contrast to the others, who wore business suits. Both were large, heavy men with hard, muscular features, a similarity in spirit rather than one of actual relationship. They had the look of men who guard the doors of bookie establishments. This was no bookie parlor, but Dunn knew they were on guard here.

  Beyond the fence were spacious, green-carpeted grounds, rolling smoothly to break in a wave of carefully-kept shrubbery at the base of the gray stone house Dunn had already seen. A number of smaller buildings, among them a garage and a greenhouse, stood at a respectful distance from the main structure. The scene had the aloofness and detachment of a scene on a picture postcard.

  “Another reporter, huh?” one of the hard-featured men said. He glanced sidewise at his companion and grinned without mirth. “The way these guys keep popping up, eh, Harry?”

  “You said it,” Harry returned. He • shook his head grimly at Dunn. “No luck, Mac. Nice idea you and the rest of these boys had, but nobody gets in this way. I been trying to sell them the fact. They won’t buy.”

  “It isn’t reasonable,” one of the reporters complained. “Stonecrest is the most important guy in the world today. He’s news. People want to know what he thinks, what he’s going to do. We can give him free publicity. But what do we get here? The Fort Knox routine, that’s what we get.”

  Harry shrugged. “Me and Vic got our orders. Mr. Stonecrest’s got all the publicity he can handle, I figure.”

  A plumpish man with a pencil tucked behind his ear turned questioningly to Dunn. “Haven’t seen you around before. What paper you with?”

  “I’m not a reporter,” Dunn said.

  The other seemed disconcerted. “Oh. Well, I suppose you want to see Stonecrest, too.”

  “Everybody wants to see Stonecrest,” another reporter put in sourly-

  Dunn shook his head. “I don’t.”

  THE GROUP stared at him with fresh interest. “That’s a new one on me!” Harry exclaimed. “What’re you after, Mac?”

  “I want to see a girl who’s staying here,” Dunn said. “Faye Manning.”

  Harry and Vic exchanged swift glances. The expressions of both underwent an odd change, became guarded.

  Harry said slowly, “Me and Vic got orders to let nobody in. And nobody gets in unless they’re expected at the house and we get told about it. We didn’t get told anything about you.”

  “I think you will—now,” Dunn returned. “Tell Mr. Stonecrest I want to see Faye Manning. Tell him I’m worried about her health, that it’s very important I see her at once.” Scenting news where none had seemed forthcoming, the reporters crowded about Dunn with eager questions.

  “Who’s this Faye Manning. She related to Stonecrest?”

  “What do you mean you’re worried about her health?”

  “You engaged to the girl?”

  The two guards, Harry and Vic, watched the reporters with troubled eyes. Abruptly, with a gesture almost of pleading, Harry swung back to Dunn.

  “Look, Mac. We get our orders from the house. You call up there and tell them what you want. Mr. Stonecrest says to pass you in, then we pass you in. Okay?”

  Dunn shook his head. “It would take too long to get him on the phone—if I could get him, to start with. I’ve got to see Miss Manning as soon as possible. Tell Mr. Stonecrest that. Tell him if I can’t talk to her, I’ll talk to these reporters.” Scowling at Dunn, Harry chewed at his lip and ran a palm along the side of his leg. A dim fury seemed to struggle in his eyes. “All right,” he said finally. “All right, Mac.”

  He whirled to the gate, fumbled a key into the lock and swung one of the two gate sections open. Then he glanced back at the avid faces
of the reporters.

  “Come on,” he said to Dunn. “You go with me. If Mr. Stonecrest says to give you the heave-ho, I’ll have plenty of room to do it in.”

  He stood with angry watchfulness in the gate opening, allowing Dunn barely enough room to brush past.

  Then he pushed the gate shut and swiftly set off down a gravel driveway that ran past the greenhouse and the garage beyond it. Dunn followed, lengthening his strides to keep up.

  Abreast of the garage, Harry darted a look back and then turned sharply toward the concrete strip that ran along the front of the wide structure. He came to a sudden stop as Dunn, puzzled by the maneuver, turned after him. The garage was set back a few yards from the driveway. On one side the greenhouse cut off the view of those at the gate, and on the other a building beyond the garage partly blocked off the main house. No other persons were present. This part of the estate was screened and private, and awareness of that fact brought a cold alertness to Dunn.

  Harry’s hand came up from behind his back, holding a snub-nosed revolver. His lips were thinned against his teeth.

  “You got a rod in your kick, Mac,” he said in a low, flat voice. “I felt it when you went past me, at the gate.”

  CHAPTER III

  DUNN stood utterly motionless, feeling a queer inner sinking. Harry gestured with the revolver.

  “Get the rod out, Mac. Let it drop. And no tricks, if you don’t want a hole in the head.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot,” Dunn said. “Not with the reporters, back there.”

  “You think I wouldn’t, Mac? I could tell the newsies you were a nut, gunning for Stonecrest.”

  “That wouldn’t explain why I wanted to see Faye Manning.”

  Harry’s eyes seemed to retreat in baffled thought. Then his face became bleakly set. “I can still fade you, Mac,” he said softly.

  As he spoke he moved. He lunged at Dunn. The revolver rose club-like in his hand, swept viciously down.

  Dunn had been poised for action, muscles bunched and quivering, like a runner awaiting the starting gun. He moved explosively. He ducked under the blow, swung his body directly into Harry’s path. The other’s momentum sent both men sprawling to the concrete strip.

  Dunn heaved and twisted free. As he came erect he saw Harry, on hands and knees, reaching for the fallen revolver. He lashed out with a foot, sent the gun skittering across the concrete and into the grass beyond.

  Snarling, Harry shot to his feet and drove in at Dunn with a barrage of wide-swinging punches. A fist glanced off the side of his head, brought a ringing giddiness. Another blow caught him solidly in the chest, drove the wind out of him and sent him staggering back against the front of the garage.

  Harry closed in, eager to finish off his victim. He was a big man, heavy-fleshed, whose muscular face showed the scars of past encounters. Dunn was the taller of the two, but younger and lighter. Harry evidently felt that his weight and experience gave him an overwhelming advantage. He pressed that advantage with reckless confidence.

  Dunn felt the garage against his back as Harry’s bulk loomed up before him. Desperate awareness of his danger cleared his head. Bracing himself, he kicked out with his foot. It was no time for sporting ethics. Crippling brutality was Harry’s own clearly evident purpose.

  Harry gasped and bent almost double, pain wiping the eagerness from his heavy features. Dunn pushed away from the garage, swung his fist in a chopping blow to the side of Harry’s face. He followed through with an uppercut that half straightened the man, and then, as Harry seemed momentarily to hang in the air, knees sagging and features blank, Dunn threw his Sunday punch. Harry went down like a bag of wet sand, lay without moving.

  UNGLANCED around quickly, breathing hard. There were no figures in sight, no sounds of alarm. The swift and almost silent struggle had escaped attention. But Dunn knew someone might appear on the scene at any moment. He had to act swiftly if he were to reach the house without further interference.

  He caught Harry under the armpits, dragged him to the greenhouse side of the garage, and from there around to the back. Harry would thus remain out of sight and out of circulation until he awoke.

  Dunn ran a handkerchief over his face and brushed at his clothes. Except for a few bruises on cheek and jaw and some skinned and bleeding knuckles, he had come through the fight in good shape. His appearance was only slightly less presentable than it had been. That was important to him where Faye Manning was concerned.

  Making certain that no one had as yet appeared, he returned to the front of the garage. He retrieved his hat from where it had fallen, slapped at his pocket to see if the automatic was still in place, then set off toward the main house. He avoided the driveway, walking on the grass well to one side and keeping the greenhouse between himself and the men at the rear gate.

  He passed the remaining smaller buildings and strode along the side of the residence structure. There was a porte cochere entrance here, with stone steps leading up to a brass-bound oak door set between long, narrow leaded glass windows. Beyond the porte cochere the driveway swept in a gentle curve across a broad expanse of lawn and ended at a double gate in the tall iron fence that enclosed the front portion of the grounds. Several men stood in a group just within the gate—more guards, apparently.

  On the other side of the fence was a spectacle that touched Dunn with awe, even though he had been expecting it from the sounds that had reached him. A huge crowd stood peering in at the house, the buzz and murmur of voices filling the air like the growl of distant thunder. In the road beyond, all but choking off traffic, were long ranks of parked cars. Horns shrilled querulously as a thin stream of vehicles crept along the narrow lane that remained.

  Abruptly his wonder sharpened. If something wrong were going on at the mansion, it was going on in the very presence of this crowd. It suggested an incredible audacity—too incredible, perhaps, to be real. Briefly he considered the dismaying likelihood that he had misunderstood Faye and was making a fool of himself in his melodramatic attempt to rescue her.

  But her warning of his danger had been definite enough. A warning that almost immediately had been climaxed by the attack on him, the destruction of his radio set. And there had been Harry’s unmistakable fear of the reporters, a fear that had made him act with swift ruthlessness. These things were signs pointing out a situation that was anything but normal or harmless. What could there be, in the circumstances surrounding Stonecrest and the Celestial Hammer, that could possibly explain it?

  DUNN HAD by now reached the steps. He hesitated a moment, gazing up at the door, awareness sharp-in him of the mystery and the threat that lay beyond it. But beyond that door as well was the owner of the soft voice that had drawn him here. There could be no thought of turning back.

  The lines of his face tightened. He went up the steps.

  He found the doorbell, pressed it. He waited. As though from a vast distance he heard the deep mutter of the crowd, the drone and screech of passing cars. But he was alone, here. He was an island, withdrawn, set apart, a solitary, lonely entity that existed only for the opening of a door.

  That door opened. It opened slowly, portentously, revealing a stocky man in a plain dark suit. His intelligent features had the hardness that seemed characteristic of Stonecrest’s employees, but in this man the hardness somehow had a cultured quality.

  The newcomer stared at Dunn. He had the expression of a person who sees the impossible and refuses to believe it.

  “How did you get here?” he demanded after a moment. The question seemed the most immediate and important thing in his mind.

  “Harry let me in,” Dunn said, “at the rear gate.”

  “Harry let you in,” the stocky man echoed, spacing the words. He peered past Dunn, as though seeking Harry. His eyes were bleak. “This . . . well, this is irregular,” he said, evidently explaining his pause. “Just who are you? What do you want?”

  “My name’s Bradley Dunn. I’m a friend of Faye Manning, and I’d like to see he
r. I’ve been worried that she might not be well.”

  “And Harry let you in on the strength of that?”

  Dunn shrugged. “I happened to mention that if I didn’t get to talk to Miss Manning I’d talk to the reporters at the gate. They seemed very interested in anything I could tell them.”

  The other nodded thoughtfully. Then he leaned closer, his whole manner undergoing a change. He was suddenly friendly and confiding, with every appearance of being sincere.

  “Mr. Dunn, I can understand that you should be worried about Miss Manning. All of us here have been caught up in events, and as a result we’ve lost touch with families and friends. Naturally that would lead to concern about us. But we’re all safe and sound—Miss Manning included. It’s just that we have a big job on our hands, a lot of problems to face.” The stocky man waved a hand toward the crowd beyond the fence. “There you see part of those problems.”

  “Miss Manning,” he went on in his confiding tone, “has her own job to do. As Mr. Stonecrest’s secretary, she’s had to handle thousands of letters that have poured in here. Frankly, I don’t think she’d want to have her work interrupted and lose the time it would take to assure you she was quite all right.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Dunn. We haven’t become anti-social, or anything of the sort. We’re just a dedicated group of people. A tremendous thing has happened—a thing that can change the world. We consider this thing more important than ourselves, more important than our own personal affairs.”

  The stocky man smiled sympathetically. “So I hope it’s clear that there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, Mr. Dunn. I’ll tell Miss Manning you inquired about her. I’m certain she’ll get in touch with you as soon as her work permits.”