Max Collins - The War of the Worlds Murder

Corporal Stevens was shaking his head. Carmine and Chuck were standing nearby, and he said to them, “I knew it!.. I’ll never regret telling off that worthless son of a bitch.”

Then Rusty, corncob pipe puffing smoke signals, leaned out from a second-floor window and shouted, “Come on in, you guys! The whole thing is a phony! It was just a radio show by some joker named Orson Welles!”

Carmine smiled at Chuck and Chuck said to Stevens, “ ‘Never,’ Corporal?”

And the troopers sheepishly shuffled back inside HQ to put their firearms away.

As the Buick hurtled at top speed, James Jr. and Bobby kept the car radio blasting.

What they heard was unsettling, to say the least.

“The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by an army in modern times-seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors…the rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray.”

Bobby was smoking; he had his window down. James told him to roll it up.

“Why, James?”

“The Martian gas…I think I can smell it.”

“The monster is now in control of the middle section of New Jersey and has effectively cut the state through its center. Communication lines are down from Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean. Railroad tracks are torn and service from New York to Philadelphia discontinued except routing some of the trains through Allentown and Phoenixville.”

James began to pray, watching the headlights cut through the foggy darkness as best they could. In his mind, he said, If there is a God, please help us now!

“Highways to the north, south, and west are clogged with frantic human traffic. Police and army reserves are unable to control the mad flight. By morning the fugitives will have swelled Philadelphia, Camden, and Trenton, it is estimated, to twice their normal population.”

Bobby was sitting forward, frowning. “James-we were just in Trenton. We didn’t see any crowds like that….”

“Martial law prevails throughout New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.”

Bobby began to twirl the radio dial, trying to find other reports.

Walter Gibson remained clueless as to the imaginary invasion having spread nationwide; but he was seeking a clue to something else by having a conversation in the eighteenth-floor men’s room.

As elevator “boy” Leo had predicted, Louis didn’t get talkative until Gibson offered him a couple of dollars. Louis, in a gray uniform that would have been at home in a prison, leaned against the door to a stall, plunger in hand, bell down.

“I don’t know Mrs. Welles, but I didn’t see no woman who looks like that in the building. I’d remember. I got an eye for the ladies.”

Louis weighed around two hundred fifty pounds, was perhaps five-eight, had greasy black hair, bulging cow eyes, yellow crooked teeth, and cheeks and chin so blue with the need for a shave that it was safe to say the ladies did not have an eye for him.

Descriptions of Balanchine and the three thugs also fell on deaf ears.

Gibson, smoking his umpteenth Camel, had a stray thought. “Louis, are you the only janitor on duty?”

“One and only.”

“When did you come on?”

“Around one P.M.”

“You know Mr. Houseman?”

“Sure.”

“You loaned him your passkey, right?”

“Sure.”

Well, that was a dead end.

But Gibson pressed on: “And he returned it?”

“Sure. First thing.”

Gibson asked a few more questions, then hitched a ride with Leo back to the twenty-second floor.

In the lobby, where security guard Williams remained seated at his desk, Miss Holliday-the shapely, sturdy girl was in a blue dress with white polka dots and white collar-stood waiting to catch the elevator.

“Miss Holliday-hello.”

She flashed her infectious smile. “Hello, Mr. Gibson.”

“Got a minute?”

“Sure. I was just heading over to the theater, to get things ready.”

“Ready?”

“Yeah…. There’s a Danton’s Death rehearsal right after the broadcast.”

“Ah. A few questions?”

“Shoot.”

“Let’s sit…”

They took two chairs in the reception area. Williams was within earshot, but it didn’t seem to matter to Gibson, who asked Miss Holliday about Virginia Welles and George Balanchine, who she too had not seen around here today…“though I’ve been in and out, back and forth, ’tween here and the theater, running errands, ya know?”

But the three thugs, strangely enough, got Miss Holliday’s pretty brow furrowing.

“Describe them again,” she said. “In more detail.”

Gibson did, best he could.

“Those sound like actors.”

Gibson frowned. “Actors?”

“Yeah-spear-carrier types. Mr. Welles uses them in crowd scenes, sometimes.”

“You’re sure?”

She made a funny smirk. “No, I’m not sure-you don’t have a picture to show me, right? But your descriptions are good-you’re a writer, aren’t you? And those three goon types sound like minor actors Mr. Welles uses, from time to time.”

“Thank you, Miss Holliday.”

“You can call me Judy.”

He walked her to the elevator, his mind abuzz.

Finally he had clues-but what he’d learned from the janitor seemed to contradict the direction Judy Holliday’s information indicated….

Quiet as a mouse, heedful but not halted by the bold ON THE AIR sign over the door, the writer slipped into Studio One, passing through the vestibule, into the live broadcast, and padding carefully up the short flight of stairs into the control booth.

Kenny Delmar was being introduced as “the Secretary of the Interior,” but the voice he did was a dead-on impression of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Citizens of the nation-I shall not try to conceal the gravity of the situation that confronts the country, nor the concern of your government in protecting the lives and property of its people. However, I wish to impress upon you-private citizens and public officials, all of you, the urgent need of calm and resourceful action.”

On his podium, Welles was grinning like a big gleeful baby.

Delmar continued: “Fortunately, this formidable enemy is still confined to a comparatively small area, and we may place our faith in the military forces to keep them there.”

Gibson had paused in the sub-control booth, and CBS executive Dave Taylor was shaking his head, sighing-Welles had been told not to invoke the president, and (technically) he hadn’t; and yet of course he had.

Delmar was wrapping up: “In the meantime, placing our faith in God, we must continue the performance of our duties, each and every one of us, so that we may confront this destructive adversary with a nation united, courageous, and consecrated to the preservation of human supremacy on this earth.”

Delmar took a dramatic pause, then: “I thank you.”

The bulletins continued at breakneck speed: from Langham Field, scout planes reported a trio of Martian machines visible above the trees, heading north; in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, a second cylinder had been found and the army was rushing to blow it up before it opened; in the Watchung Mountains, the 22 ndField Artillery closed in on the enemy, but poisonous black smoke dispatched by the invaders wiped out the battery.

Eight bombers were set on fire by the tripods in a flash of green. More of the lethal black smoke was leaching in from the Jersey marshes, and gas masks were of no use, the populace urged to make for open spaces.