The Doomsday Men

by J. B. Priestley

  He looked at her solemnly, then took her hand and held it a moment, and astonished her by saying: “I wonder if you’re fond of pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Yes, pictures—paintings—my paintings I’m really thinking about.”

  “Why, do you paint pictures, Jimmy?”

  He nodded solemnly. “My great hobby, painting pictures. And I’ll tell you something. Nobody thinks I’m any good at it—but me.”

  “Oh—what a shame!” She sounded honestly indignant. A good start, but she hadn’t seen any of the pictures yet.

  “I’d like you to see one or two.”

  “I’d like to, Jimmy.”

  “Yes, but this is specially important.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can’t tell you now, Rosalie.” But he pressed her hand and looked for a moment as if he was about to kiss her, and Rosalie was deciding like lightning that he could if he wanted to. But he didn’t, only gave her another solemn searching look, over which she speculated for many an hour before they talked again.

  “Now look after yourselves, you two,” cried Rosalie, as she drew back from the plane, and Jimmy climbed into the open cockpit beside Charlie.

  “Careful where you put your foot, Jimmy,” said Charlie. And Jimmy saw that he would have to be very careful indeed. There was a horribly improvised, boys’ magazine, canvas and lath look about this airplane. It had looked a very dubious vehicle even from the outside, but on a closer view, from the inside, it set Jimmy quaking.

  “And what in the name of Pete,” he asked himself anxiously, “have I let myself in for this time?” He had only once been in a small plane before, and even that had looked a miracle of safety compared with this dilapidated little old monster. It was difficult to feel any confidence in Bendy. And then there was Charlie. He might be a most experienced and brilliant pilot, but the fact remained that he was also a reckless devil who confessed that he was getting tired of this life. Curtains indeed!

  “Charlie,” he roared, for now the engine was being warmed up and the propeller whirring, “just remember that if you’re tired of life, I’m not. Take it easy, boy.”

  “You leave it to me,” replied Charlie, now in high delight. “Look out. I’m letting her go.”

  A last wave to Rosalie, standing there, an anxious little figure, and they were off into the blue. The ranch went huddling down into a few tiny roofs; the whole valley contracted into a narrow greenish slit; and now they were over the mountains, and bumping about horribly, so that Jimmy felt terrified. Charlie yelled that it was always bumpy over these mountains, and Jimmy wished he had thought of that before he agreed to come along. Every time Bendy dropped, she seemed to creak and groan and flap and shiver as if her last moment had arrived, and it was small consolation to Jimmy that Charlie did not appear to mind at all but continued in the highest spirits. Give him the air, he cried; and Jimmy felt ready to make him a present of the entire element.

  They were still climbing, though not steadily, for Bendy still kept bumping and suddenly dropping. “Ride her, cowboy——” roared Charlie, handling the controls, which had a home-made look about them, with a dash and abandon that failed to bring confidence to his passenger. Now they might have been flying over the dead face of the moon. They were above desolate mountains, and ringed round with desert. Jimmy could see innumerable wrinkles and folds below, as if some old brownish fur rug had been hastily kicked into position down there, and not a sign of man. Any green places there might have been there were lost to view. No water gleamed. Where the rocks ended, the sand began. Nothing stirred, except an occasional vulture or buzzard. Far off, on their left hand, to the north, were higher mountains, shining remote peaks. But it was the grim desolation below that caught and held Jimmy’s imagination, for it was as if a world had died there. Beneath the first fear, the fear of an immediate disaster, a sudden drop that Bendy would not shiveringly come out of, a crash on one of those pinnacles of rock, he discovered now a deeper and darker terror, born of this ancient desolation, this dead face of a landscape, and not to be put into words and reasoned with, a terror that came in full sunlight and yet seemed to belong to midnight and bad dreams.

  No nonsense of this kind about Charlie, who seemed to prefer rocketing about in mid-air to a sensible existence on the ground. He was in great form. He began to play with Bendy as if she were a kind of monstrous flying kitten; they had the jolliest romps together up there above the rocky spears and bludgeons of those mountain tops; and as he cavorted with her he shouted and sang. Jimmy hoped the madman was really making for their destination, but doubted it. He had an unpleasant notion that they were just playing about in blue space. He had just opened his mouth to say so, at the top of his voice, when Bendy’s nose went down and the whole earth suddenly tilted. So Jimmy decided to reserve his energies in order to cope with these startling phenomena. That tilting earth, now, those mountain peaks all askew. Charlie seemed to want to have a closer look at them; but Jimmy closed his eyes.

  “No,” roared Charlie, “that’s not right. Try again.”

  This time they went very high, and Charlie stopped playing the fool—if he had been playing the fool, for Jimmy was never quite sure—and now looked about him soberly, carefully. Finally, he gave an exclamation, pointed Bendy’s nose down again, and descended in a vast skimming curve. Jimmy noticed they were losing speed, and beginning to spiral down.

  “That’s it,” shouted Charlie. “I’ll take her nearer—but—not easy—get very near.”

  Sheer curiosity now conquered all Jimmy’s mixed fears. He looked and saw a steep and narrow valley, almost like a gorge, and nearly at the head of it was a cluster of roofs among trees. Bendy went nearer, and now he saw the white tower, which was just behind the main house. A road ran the length of the valley, and another went back, through a little pass, almost as sharp as a cutting, in the mountain wall behind. Now Charlie was circling round steadily; but though Jimmy stared hard all the time, he did not learn very much more. The buildings had white walls and red roofs, of curly Spanish tiles; all, that is, except the tower itself, which appeared to have an open platform instead of a roof. A line of pylons approached the buildings from the rear, running not far from the road that went out at the back. Apart from the main house and the tower, there must have been ten or twelve smaller structures. It was a most impressive-looking establishment, and there was obviously room in it for all three MacMichaels and a small crowd of friends or employees. Clearly, they might be up to anything in a place like this, but there was nothing to throw any light on what they actually were doing.

  Charlie shouted something about trying to get nearer, and suddenly roared down, bringing out several people from the main house and one man out on to the tower platform; but Jimmy could not discover anything more of any importance. He appeared to have seen all there was to be seen from the air. He yelled this in Charlie’s ear, and Charlie nodded, and sent Bendy careering up again, leaving the valley behind. Jimmy could not help feeling a trifle disappointed. He could not imagine what he had hoped to see; but what he had seen had really told him nothing. They were no wiser than when they had left this morning. He did not even understand how the place was reached by road. In fact, he understood exactly nothing.

  The return journey, however, was much pleasanter. Jimmy was now fairly familiar with most of Bendy’s playful antics, and could believe that each repetition of them did not mean the beginning of the end. They ate their sandwiches too, which made him feel more at home in this rickety machine. The desolation below was no longer so startling and terrifying; it began to take on the appearance of a vast relief map; and Jimmy tried to take an intelligent interest in its topography. Reluctant to leave the air, Charlie took a wide sweep round, and Jimmy was able to observe the Mohave Desert curving away like a yellowish sea. At last a faint thread below, dropped among the black or glistening
rocks, was declared by Charlie to be the very road along which Rosalie had brought Jimmy from Barstow. They could follow it, Charlie said, straight back to the ranch; and Jimmy was all for doing this. So Charlie brought them down several hundred feet, remarking casually at the same time that it was a risky thing to do, and they went swooping and roaring above the road.

  Farther along there was a moving blur of dust. Jimmy looked at it anxiously. “Isn’t that a car going to the ranch?” he shouted.

  “Must be,” said Charlie, and swooped down to get a better look. As they came nearer, the car arrived at a point where another track, going to lose itself in the hills, left the road to the ranch, and now it stopped, and two men climbed out presumably to decide the way and after a moment they were joined by two others. Jimmy could plainly see the four of them pointing and gesticulating, and then he saw them look up.

  “Can we get closer?” he yelled to Charlie.

  Charlie swung the indignant Bendy, who tilted and creaked and strained horribly at being wrenched from her former course, round in a circle, and then, returning towards the men, sent her roaring down, sharply, sickeningly. But Charlie seemed to know exactly how to handle his machine, for he brought her down in such a way that although they were bumping along at a great speed and it was not easy to look down over the side, Jimmy was able to catch a reasonably good glimpse of those men. One, taller than the others, wore no hat. Yes, it was Brother Kaydick again.

  “All okay?” asked Charlie.

  “No,” shouted Jimmy. “Get back to the ranch.”

  Charlie shot them up and swung them out again, and as they turned Jimmy saw that the car was moving again, and had taken the right turning, straight to the ranch.

  “Four of ’em,” he shouted to Charlie.

  “They’re travelling too,” said Charlie. “Doesn’t look it from here, but they’re going hell for leather.”

  Bendy might be old and battered but she was still more than a match for any car, though Charlie could not let her full out and had to be careful because, he explained, there were some particularly nasty air pockets above the little patch of mountainous rock between them and the ranch. As it was, they bumped horribly, but now Jimmy did not care, so long as they got back to the ranch in time. Once it looked as if they would never return at all, for Bendy behaved very badly and Charlie cursed and sweated at the controls. And the landing was not easy, for there was not much room to spare and Charlie shouted that the wind, which curled sharply, almost spun itself, in that narrow little valley, was unusually bad. But at last they did land.

  Charlie had been so occupied handling the machine that Jimmy had felt it impossible to discuss anything with him. Now he had to talk fast.

  “There’s only one thing to do, Charlie,” he cried urgently. “Get Rosalie out of it.”

  “This won’t take three, y’know——”

  “I know. But I’ll stay——”

  “Hell, I don’t like that, Jimmy,” Charlie began protesting. “Let’s fight it out with ’em.”

  “We can’t—only two of us—and with Rosalie here—and four of them, ready to use guns. Honestly, it’s the only thing, Charlie. Now keep her running, and be ready to take off. I’ll fetch Rosalie.”

  As he turned and ran forward, he saw her come out of the ranch-house and wave. He ran as hard as he could go, but once he had left the flattened ground where Charlie landed and took off, it was soft going and he was a heavy man, so that it took time to cover the two or three hundred yards and when he arrived near the house, yelling as he came, he was hot, breathless and nearly exhausted.

  “What’s the matter?” she was saying.

  “Kaydick—and three other men—coming along in a car. Be here any minute. Only thing to do—you go off in the plane with Charlie.”

  “Why, Jimmy, certainly not.”

  “I tell you, Rosalie, it’s the only thing we can do. You’ll have to believe me. And we haven’t a second to lose.”

  “But are you sure? I mean, that it’s those men?”

  “I distinctly saw them. Come on.” And he grabbed her by the arm and began hurrying her away from the house. At first she was taken by surprise, but after a moment she tried to free herself.

  “I don’t want to go. You’re the one who ought to go. It’s you they’re after.”

  “They’ll think now we’re all in it together,” he replied, still pulling her along. “Look! There they are.”

  His own startled tone and the actual sight of the car racing up the road combined together to make her afraid now. She offered no more resistance, but hurried along, with his hand at her elbow. Charlie must have seen or heard the car too, for now he had his engine running again and had turned the plane round. He was leaning forward to help Rosalie in. Now she was hesitating again.

  “It’s all right,” said Jimmy gasping, “quite safe.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that,” she flashed at him, reproachfully. “I was thinking of you.”

  “I’m all right,” said Jimmy, who felt anything but all right. He could hardly get his breath, and there were fifty knives in his side—to say nothing of Kaydick and the others bearing down on them. But he made a great effort and fairly lifted Rosalie into the plane.

  “Jimmy,” Charlie shouted, “you’re a great guy. I’ll take her to the coast. Here,” and he flung out a folded scrap of paper, “that’s my phone number, if you want me and Bendy in a hurry. Or shall I tell the police?”

  “Not yet, Charlie, give me a day or two. Goodbye, Rosalie,” and he staggered back out of the way. She was saying something, but he could not catch a word. There was just time, however, to notice that she seemed to be crying a bit.

  As Bendy shot forward, Jimmy saw that the big car had stopped, and now the men came hurrying towards them. But they were too late. Bendy was off, tilting badly, protesting against it all, but nobly taking to the air again. Jimmy just gave himself time to make sure she was up, and then, with the knives at work inside him and his heart nearly bursting out of his body, he made for the ranch-house again, as fast as he could go. And as he went, he cursed himself for a thrice-damned fool. While he was persuading Rosalie to go, he could have easily rushed inside, taken out that piece of apparatus that Kaydick thought was so important, and put it in the plane. Now it was hopeless, but with some vague idea of reaching the house before they did, he staggered on, almost blindly, with the sweat streaming down his broad puckered face.

  He arrived at the doorway only to find himself confronted by the bleached young man he had knocked out in the hut at Baker. And once more that young man was pointing a gun at him, and this time he looked as if he were only too anxious to use it. There he had to stay, sobbing for breath, until the others came up. No sign of Deeks or the Mexicans, but Jimmy felt they would be useless in such a crisis.

  “You stole a package, friend,” said Brother Kaydick sternly. “What have you done with it? No, before you begin to lie or evade the question, I will tell you this. We are not ordinary men going about our ordinary business. We do not work for gain. We have been set apart from other men because we have been given a little insight into the mysterious ways of our Lord. We are his faithful servants. In a little while all things known to you will come to an end. Therefore it is nothing to us if we should have to make an end of you now, or if, to make you speak, we should be compelled to give you a foretaste of what you will soon suffer in Hell. Nor would it seem hateful to us to destroy everything here, leaving not a stone standing, because it would only be going the way of all worldly things. Friend, you have heard me combat your lies with lies of my own invention. But now you hear the solemn truth. Where is the thing you stole from us?”

  Jimmy had not led an easy and sheltered life; in many rough places he had been compelled to listen to many rough speeches; but he could not recall one that had impressed him as this of K
aydick’s did now. The man might be living in some mad world of his own, lit by the gleams of hell-fire; but he was terribly in earnest and was not making idle threats. Jimmy knew that so far as that piece of apparatus was concerned, the game was up. These cool madmen were desperate. He was glad Rosalie was out of it.

  “I opened it,” he told Kaydick, “and all that there was inside is in there.”

  They took him into the living-room with them and he showed them the large fat tube with the curious metal fittings.

  “Is that all there was?” demanded Kaydick sternly.

  “Yes. Nothing else at all.”

  “Where are its wrappings?”

  Jimmy was not sure but thought they might have been dumped into the shed at the back. Fortunately, one of the men found them there, all but some of the straw and stuff; and this seemed to convince Kaydick that Jimmy was telling the truth. They made another secure package of the apparatus, while one of them began to make a second secure package out of poor Jimmy, who had both his hands and feet tied. They sat him at the back of the car, between two of them; and then after Kaydick, who took charge of the apparatus, had made Jimmy swear again that they had all that was in the package he had taken, they drove off, without carrying out their threat to destroy the ranch-house, much to Jimmy’s relief.

  They drove quickly over the rutted and rocky tracks, and Jimmy, so trussed up that he could not adjust himself to all the bumping, had a horrible time of it. Nor was it long before the thin rope began to cut into his wrists and ankles. Where they were going, he did not know, and it was difficult to see out from where he was at the back; but he had an idea, not very carefully considered because his misery was too absorbing, that they went back along the road to Barstow and then turned off, up a steep side-track, to avoid the town and the main roads. The pain was becoming unendurable, and Jimmy implored them to untie him. For a weary long time they ignored his outcry, but then, just as he was about to faint, Kaydick gave the order that he should be loosed. In the vast relief of this freedom, and in spite of his chafed and aching wrists and ankles, Jimmy, leaning back and vaguely seeing the sunset glow all round them, began to nod and droop, and finally in his utter weariness fell fast asleep.