The Doomsday Men

by J. B. Priestley

  “Yes, of course,” said the other, “you’re the two I asked first—in the dining-room. You must think I’m clean off my nut—don’t blame you if you do—but I’m not. I’m just crazy enough to go and let myself in for something when I might be having a nice quiet life—but that’s all. I think I’d better tell you something about it—I’ve got to tell somebody—can’t go on like this—and I owe you two something. Here, are you staying at the Harvey House? So am I. Well, let’s get back there—can’t talk here—and I’m cold. I was nearly cold for ever that time.”

  On the way back they gave him their names and he told them his—Jimmy Edlin, late of Shanghai and Honolulu, more recently still of the Clay-Adams Hotel, Los Angeles. He seemed an amusing and adventurous sort of chap, and Malcolm was curious to know what had been happening to him and why he should go about asking a question about a clock striking, yet he could not help regretting this interruption in the talk between him and Hooker about the mysterious MacMichael family. Also, he was anxious to hear Hooker’s story, which might closely concern Andrea. Nevertheless, he asked both his companions to join him in his room at the hotel, for it turned out that he was one floor lower down than Hooker and nearer the stairs than Edlin, whose room, Number Twenty-two, was round the corner of the long corridor.

  Once inside Malcolm’s room, Jimmy Edlin lit a pipe and the other two lit cigarettes, and they settled down cosily. Before he began talking, Edlin had a good look at both of them, though he had already done this once before, in the dining-room. “Don’t mind me, boys,” he said. “Yes, I’m looking you over again. You see, if I’m to talk, I’ve to trust you. I’m up against something, believe me. And there’s more to it than I thought there was, and that’s saying a lot. But I know you two are all right, and you’ve done me a good turn. Does either of you know anything about a sort of religious society called the Brotherhood of the Judgment?”

  Neither Malcolm nor Hooker had ever heard of it, and said so.

  “I’ll try again,” said Edlin, puffing away at his pipe. “The head of it—and I’ve not seen him so I can’t tell you what he’s like—is living somewhere up this way. They call him Father John—which doesn’t get you very far—but I happen to know his name is MacMichael—hey, steady, boys!” He added this because, to his great astonishment, both his listeners had given a shout.

  Malcolm began to wonder if the whole thing was simply getting out of control. This was too fantastic. It really would not do. And he told them so. “I’ve been doing a lot of travelling,” he told them. “All very rum—to me. I’ve just had five days in Hollywood with a client of ours, who seemed to be living in a sort of film nightmare, and as I stayed with him I was in the nightmare too, with one girl coming to dinner bringing a leopard with her, and another girl who said my aura was bright blue with yellow stars in it, and a chap so tight he said he could only go round on all fours, and an awful quarrel between my host and two other fellows about whether they should use real elephants or have them made of rubber; and not much sleep lately; and then I come here, feeling a fool and not quite real, and it’s all desert and I haven’t the least idea where I’ll find this MacMichael girl I’m looking for; and then you, Mr. Hooker, begin talking to me about MacMichaels and professors with wrong names who are missing; and now you, Mr. Edlin, after coming running up with people firing at you, begin talking about clocks striking and some brotherhood or whatever it is and a Father John and he turns out to be a MacMichael too—well, what I mean is, it’s all right, isn’t it?—nobody’s simply being funny, are they?—just taking advantage of the general dither I’m in—now, tell me, honestly, you fellows.”

  Jimmy Edlin, taking his pipe out of his mouth, stared in astonishment at the end of this outburst; but Hooker, after grinning sympathetically, said slowly: “I know just what you feel, Mr. Darbyshire. I feel a bit that way too. But it seems all right.”

  “I thought you boys were stone-cold sober,” said Edlin reproachfully. “I know I am. If you’ve started on a blind, I’ll either retire or catch up, just as you say, but I think in that case we’d better postpone the talk.”

  They assured him they were completely sober. Neither of them had had a single drink that night.

  “Then let’s get this straight,” said Edlin earnestly. “Do I understand that you’re both looking for this MacMichael lot? And separately? And here we are, the three of us. Now this is what they call coincidence, isn’t it? Well, coincidence my foot! I tell you, boys—and I’m older than you and I’ve seen a lot in my time—these things don’t work by chance. We were brought together for a purpose, believe me.”

  “What purpose?” asked Hooker, who was obviously sceptical.

  “I don’t exactly know yet. But I’ll tell you this much. And if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t be here—running down desert roads with fellows taking potshots at me. There’s something going on—back there—” he waved a hand, presumably to indicate the distant mountains “—that’s all wrong.”

  Malcolm stared, bewildered, but Hooker merely shook his head and muttered something about a possible scientific experiment.

  “No, sir,” said Jimmy Edlin emphatically. “I’m not talking about scientific experiments—in fact, I don’t see where they come in—though you may. I’m talking about something that these religious fanatics are working for—I don’t say they all know about it, but some of ’em do—and whatever it is they’re at, it’s important enough to them so that they don’t stop short at murder.” And he shot the startling ugly word at them.

  There was a moment’s silence, during which Edlin looked hard from one to the other of them, while they exchanged puzzled glances. Then a queer hateful thought, the ghost of which had haunted him several times when he had been awake late thinking about Andrea, came to Malcolm, to explain the girl’s reserve and secrecy and melancholy. He dismissed it hastily, though he knew it would return, probably later that night, to haunt him more fearfully than ever.

  “You see,” said Jimmy Edlin gravely, “I got into this because my brother Phil, who was a reporter in Los Angeles, was murdered.” He went on to tell the story of his evening with Rushy Drew and of what happened the following night at the meeting of the Brotherhood of the Judgment, and how he had arranged to meet one of the brethren here at the hotel at Barstow. “I was a fool, of course,” he continued, “to think I’d get away with it. I was too pleased with myself, and didn’t stop to think, that was my trouble. I hired a car and came along here—I’d only just arrived when I asked you two fellows the clock question. Then I went out and met a fellow down there in the lobby—weather-beaten ordinary sort o’ fellow in the usual Western rig-out—and he stared at me hard, so I took him on one side and we exchanged the password all right, and he said he had a car there, waiting to take me up among the hills to meet Father John. There was another of ’em in the car. No sooner had we started off than I felt it was all wrong. I could feel it in my bones. And something about the look of those two fellows too. They didn’t like me, and I knew it. When we got just beyond the bridge, I shouted to ’em I’d forgotten something and asked ’em to slow up. They slowed up all right, probably without thinking, and then I made a dash for it. You heard ’em taking a pot at me. It was only being so close to the town that saved me. Of course what had happened was that after that meeting, perhaps after Kaydick had got in touch with Father John, they’d made some enquiries—perhaps sent a cable or something—and tumbled to the fact that I was an outsider. So they sent for me all right, but only to take me into that desert and leave me there—cold.”

  “But you don’t really know that,” Malcolm protested. “They may have been genuinely taking you to see Father John.”

  “And then tried to kill me because I decided to refuse the invitation,” Edlin retorted grimly. “No, sir. You try riding behind two fellows who know they’re going to do you in, it’s quite a different sensation from the usual pleasure trip.
Even their backs look different. And just notice this. Even if they only suspected I wasn’t a real member of the Judgment troupe, they’d only to refuse to send anybody, and I’d have been stranded here, because it’s new country to me and how the hell would I know where Father John is. That’s what ordinary people, who had somebody butting into their affairs like that, would have done. Just ignored me.”

  “I don’t see why these people didn’t, if you think they really had found you out,” said Hooker.

  “Because I knew too much. I didn’t know a lot, but it was too much.”

  “But anybody could walk into their meetings,” Malcolm pointed out. “You said that yourself.”

  “Certainly. And we could all join the Brotherhood to-morrow, I reckon, and sing hymns and listen to prayers and be told that God loves us so much he might burn us up at any moment. But there’s obviously an inner circle—Brother Kaydick and his tough boys—and to be one of them you’ve probably to take an oath and all the rest of it, swear to obey orders—and you’re given a sort of password. How my brother Phil discovered it, I don’t know, probably heard two fellows in this inner circle—they’re the Servers and they have numbers, all the old bag of tricks—doing their clock-won’t-strike act together. But he did know—that, and a few other things—and they found out he knew—and went for him. And if I hadn’t had a quick hunch to-night—and broken the two hundred yards record—that would have been the last of me. And from now on, of course, that clock question is out—they’ll have changed that now.”

  “What was it again?” asked Hooker, thoughtfully. And when the question and answer were repeated to him, he went over them slowly. “You know, that’s a very odd thing to say. I don’t suppose it means anything, but still—it’s very odd.”

  “It ties up with all that gloomy Revelations stuff they handed out at the meeting,” Edlin remarked. “I told you. They were a gloomy lot. I took a great dislike to ’em myself. So would you have done. There was a very nice little widow there, sitting near me, and she hated ’em on sight—like a sensible woman.”

  Forgetting for the moment that there might possibly be some connection between his mysterious Andrea and these ferocious fanatics, Malcolm remarked: “But I don’t really see why you don’t report the whole thing to the police, and have done with it.”

  Edlin chuckled. “That’s the English touch all right. Send for the police.”

  Hooker smiled at this, though he might have been remembering his own encounter with the English police.

  “Well, why not?” Malcolm persisted.

  “It wouldn’t work. If I knew somebody in the police here, and could get a good man put quietly on the job, really collecting evidence against them, then it might work. But I don’t, and what would happen if I complained would be that this Brotherhood of the Judgment would prove it was a nice respectable organisation, with all its members paying taxes and living with their own wives, and Father John would turn out to be a nice old gentleman with a long beard and sandals, first cousin to a senator or a federal judge, and Mr. Jimmy Edlin would be given a sour look and would be asked to go away and not make a nuisance of himself, and I’d be farther away from knowing anything worth knowing than I was before.”

  Hooker considered this carefully. “You’re right, I guess, Mr. Edlin. You’d have to know a lot more before you could bring the police in. But I still don’t begin to understand why these people, however silly they may be about their beliefs, should be ready to risk murder.”

  “And I don’t. That’s just the point. But there must be something they’re up to, and, if you ask me, it’s not there in Los Angeles. This is the real end, though where, what or how—I don’t know. But then I don’t even know yet how you boys come to be in it.”

  Malcolm did not reply because he happened to glance across at Hooker, who was looking very thoughtful and clearly was about to speak. So Malcolm waited; and Edlin looked across at Hooker too. The latter stretched his long legs out at full length, appeared to examine his socks, which were wrinkled round the tops of his dusty shoes, and then observed slowly: “The queer thing is—that if the MacMichaels are really in this—they worked, or tried to work, the very same trick on me. I’ve thought it over a good deal, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only possible reason why they should have tried that ridiculous frame-up was to keep me out of the way and keep me busy defending myself because they thought I was too curious.” And having made this maddening statement, which tantalised both his hearers because they did not understand what he meant by his “frame-up,” Hooker sighed hard and stared again at his wrinkled socks.

  “Now, Mr. Hooker,” Jimmy Edlin began.

  “It’s Dr. Hooker really, if you must talk like that——”

  “I didn’t know you were a medical man.”

  “I’m not—thank God—just a doctor of science—mainly physics—but just call me Hooker——”

  “Fine! It looks as if we’re all in this thing together, though I don’t understand why yet—but then that’s what you’re going to tell me, both of you. But before you start, I must have a drink. I don’t know how you boys feel, but I need a drink badly, and as it happens I put a bottle of Scotch in my bag.”

  “But isn’t your bag in that car?” said Hooker.

  “No, I got in just as I was. Lucky too! Anyhow, I’ll get that Scotch and bring a couple of glasses from my room. It’s just round the corner. Back in half a minute.”

  But he was not back in half a minute. Malcolm and Hooker waited in silence for several minutes, as people so often do when one party in an important conversation has just left them but has promised to return very soon. Each went over in his mind what had recently been said, and they had plenty to think about.

  Malcolm finally broke the silence. “Taking his time, isn’t he? He seems all right—rather a likeable chap, I think—but I don’t know what to make of this yarn of his.”

  “No,” said Hooker slowly, “but he didn’t invent those shots we heard. If it wasn’t for them, I’d think he was imagining things, just because his brother had been killed and nobody knew who’d done it. But what happened to him to-night—and we were witnesses—proves that he isn’t imagining things. There is a John MacMichael too. I found that out when I came home and began making enquiries about the MacMichaels.”

  “Tell me about them,” said Malcolm eagerly. “I couldn’t find out much.”

  “Old Thomas MacMichael, that’s their father, was one of the old Western copper men, and he made a pile. Henry, who was the eldest son, went into Wall Street and made a whole lot more—still has most of it, I guess. The next son, Paul, became a scientist, and didn’t use his last name, perhaps because he didn’t want people to think he was getting by because of the old man’s money. John’s the other, and I couldn’t find out anything about him. Perhaps he’s off his head. They’re a queer lot. I never liked Paul—the one I knew—though he’s a swell physicist.”

  There was a long pause. Finally, Malcolm said: “Look here, I think you’d better tell me now, while we’re waiting, what happened to you. I’m dying to know—and Edlin seems to be enjoying most of that whisky by himself.”

  So Hooker described his search for the missing Engelfield, the discovery of him in London, and then his adventures at the Old Farm and the fair at Ewsbury. It was a long recital.

  “It didn’t make a lot of sense,” Hooker concluded, “but all I can think is this. Paul found himself on the track of something really big in his own field, which is roughly the same as mine, research in atomic structure, and especially experiments in the transmutation of elements—I don’t know if you understand what that’s all about,” he added, hopefully.

  “No, I don’t,” said Malcolm hastily, “and if you don’t mind, just now I’d rather not try. Some other time.”

  Hooker grinned. “Whenever you say. But, as I said, I
think he saw something big ahead of him, so cleared out and dropped his old name. He’s money of his own and, besides, probably he has his brother Henry backing him. And whatever he’s doing, he wants to keep it to himself, which doesn’t surprise me, knowing him.”

  “You mean, you think his discovery may be valuable from a commercial point of view?” Malcolm was not clear as to the drift of Hooker’s remarks. “So it has to be a secret.”

  “No. I’ll bet, after I said ‘transmutation,’ you began thinking about alchemy, gold from lead and all the rest of it, didn’t you? Thought so.” Hooker’s grin was sardonic, but friendly. “No, that’s not it. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a commercial angle to this thing, though it’s always just possible that a man experimenting in that field might discover a new cheap form of energy. You’ve heard the line of talk? The Queen Mary driven across the Atlantic with the energy from a bit of coal about as big as a walnut. Sounds fine. Only they don’t tell you how much it would cost, even if you could do it, to get the energy out of that bit of coal. No, what he’s probably working on is something simply of value to science, but he’s an arrogant and solitary and anti-social devil—all wrong for a scientist, of course—and he doesn’t want to share anything or be criticised or risk being laughed at, so he’s keeping under cover until it’s all perfect and he can come out and say, ‘Now look what I’ve done, you boobs!’ That’s Paul Engelfield MacMichael. I could see by the look in his eye, when he said a few things to me that time in the Savoy Hotel, that he was tackling something very big and was pleased with himself. Now if it had been you, say, who walked in on him, he wouldn’t have minded. The trouble was that it was me, George Hooker. I don’t want to boost myself, but after all it is a fact that I’m one of the few fellows who’ve been working in the same field, and of course he knew it because we’d had arguments before. So, not like a decent scientist, which he ought to be, but—” and here Hooker suddenly lost his deliberate calm and raised his voice excitedly “—just like a copper king’s son and a Wall Street shyster’s brother, he plays a God-damned dirty trick on me. And he hasn’t heard the last of it either.”