Max Collins - The War of the Worlds Murder

“ That museum piece?” Gross had said.

“Yeah. We’re trying to blow the dust off.” Collins had a wry smile that was like a wrinkle in his face; the guy was only in his forties but he seemed like he’d been born sixty. “Good Sunday-funnies fantasy, but for radio?”

“I’d think Orson would leave that kind of thing to the kiddie shows, like Buck Rogers .”

Collins shrugged, then said, “Well, he has dressed it up some. And this is Hallowe’en weekend. It’s better than it was at a first read-through, anyway.”

“Should I give a listen?”

“Aw, I wouldn’t bother, if I were you. Probably bore you to death.”

Now here, a few days later, Gross was imposing on his hosts to give up their favorite comedy show, at least for a few minutes (and everybody knew the best part of the Charlie McCarthy/Edgar Bergen hour was the opening monologue), to let him check up on what a Mercury insider himself said was Welles at his lousiest.

Still, you never knew with that boy-genius. Welles coasting along was better than most people at full throttle; and if Mr. Mercury Theatre displayed some ingenuity in dressing up that familiar fantasy, who knew? Might be worth a line or two in his column for the late edition.

So everybody ate their salads as the show began, conventionally enough, with the standard intro and theme and a sonorous opening by Welles.

Then it took a strange turn.

“ Ladies and gentlemen ,” an announcer was saying, “ we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News-at twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas …”

The hostess asked, “Is that the program, or…?”

The announcer was saying, “… occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars .”

The host smiled and said, “It’s just the show-it’s Mars they’re talking about. ‘War of the Worlds,’ remember?”

Somebody else said, “No such thing as the ‘Intercontinental Radio News’ service.”

Then everyone was smiling and laughing, feeling nicely superior, as the announcer continued: “The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving toward the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell’s observation, and describes the phenomenon as, quote, like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun, unquote…. We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York .”

The tango limped back on.

And stayed on.

“Heard enough?” the host asked.

Kathleen whispered to her husband: “Dear…this is boring. Don’t you think?”

Gross swallowed a bite of tomato drenched in Italian dressing, which was tart enough to make it seem like he was making a face when he said, “Please-just a few more minutes…. You know, Doris, this dressing is delicious. Just great.”

The others at the table smiled at him.

But they didn’t seem to mean it any more than Gross had meant his salad-dressing compliment.

James Roberts, Jr., twenty, was behind the wheel of a Buick coupe purchased for him by his father, James Roberts, Sr., business executive. Wearing a rust-colored sweater and dark brown tie on a yellow shirt, the young man was slender, well-groomed, with neatly cut and combed brown hair, an attractive college man but for his rather close-set blue eyes that gave an impression of less than stellar intelligence, an impression which James Jr. seldom gave cause for reconsideration.

Riding with him was his friend Bobby, another junior at Princeton University. They were on their way back to their frat house, having visited Bobby’s girlfriend, Betty, for the weekend in Manhattan.

Blond, round-faced Bobby, lighting up a Philip Morris cigarette, asked, “What did you think of Betty’s sister?”

“Cute,” James said, hands on the wheel. No one called him “Jimmy” just as-oddly-no one called Bobby “Robert.”

“Cute, huh? Then why didn’t you make a move?”

“A little young. Naive.”

“Nice chassis on her, though, for a sixteen-year-old, don’t ya think?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah.” James thought it might be somehow impolite or even gauche to mention that the sister had an even better build than Bobby’s Betty, who was kind of broad in the beam and flat in the chest, for James’s tastes.

“Sometimes,” Bobby said with a knowing wink, “naive ain’t such a bad thing.”

The two laughed.

The night was bright, with a moon and stars, and the countryside had an unreal aspect, bathed in ivory-a very pretty blue-gray, though a gentle fog was starting to roll in, not a hazard, merely a touch of unreality. Funny how the cold concrete of Manhattan could disappear into the idyllic countryside of New Jersey in a seeming flash.

“Mind if I switch on the radio?” Bobby asked.

“Not at all,” James said.

Dance music was on.

Pretty soon a news bulletin interrupted “Stardust,” and Bobby turned it up.

New York State troopers Carmine and Chuck had spent an uneventful, even sleepy afternoon on the job. They’d even kept the top down on their ’37 Ford Phaeton, to better enjoy the beautiful fall day, and keep a good wide view of the landscape, including the ribbon of cement that was their responsibility. The majority of state-trooper strength, this Sunday, had been on the road, dispatched to deal with heavy weekend traffic as the upstate resorts emptied their clientele back into the city.

And on Hallowe’en eve, the usual run of adolescent pranks could be assumed, though nothing yet. Maybe the teenage ghosts and goblins would wait till tomorrow night to spring with their stuff.

Carmine and Chuck’s job was to keep traffic moving, and to handle any accidents or other mishaps. But after several hours of not-much-of-anything, they headed in to make a stop at HQ. This was necessary because the troopers had yet to score the newfangled radio communications gear some big city forces were getting, and rural police did not have call boxes to make checking in a snap.

So for updates and new assignments, periodic stops at HQ were a must.

In the teletype room, the trooper on duty-Rusty, a burly, boyish guy whose curly red hair had given him his moniker-looked up as Carmine and Chuck swaggered in. Rusty’s trademark was a corncob pipe that he puffed harder, the more excited he got about a subject.

“Any wants?” Carmine asked.

“Any lookouts?” Chuck asked.

“A few stolen cars. Here’s the list.” Rusty handed it over. Puffing away like Popeye, he gestured to the portable radio at the desk from which the trooper monitored the teletype machine; dance music was playing. “The regular programs have been interrupted a couple times-some kinda, I dunno, lunar disturbance out in South Jersey.”

Carmine frowned. “What kind of what?”

Rusty shrugged. “Do I look like a scientist? I just hope it ain’t a earthquake, ’cause I got my folks over there in South Jersey, and they ain’t young.”

“Well,” Carmine advised from the doorway, “you keep one ear glued to that radio-we’ll stop back in an hour and see if there’s anything to this thing.”

Rusty nodded. “Roger,” he said, and puffed on his pipe. “Hey-it’s supposed to be gettin’ foggy. Watch it out there.”

The two troopers nodded, gave casual forefinger salutes, and went back out into a quiet night that was about to get louder.

Walter Gibson, blissfully unaware that the Mars broadcast had already begun to stir hornets, was conducting his murder investigation.