by John Creasey
A tap at the door cut across his words, and one of Hartwall’s young secretaries came in on the Prime Minister’s call; an amiable-looking young man with golden hair.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Prime Minister, but there is a telephone call for Dr. Palfrey.’
Palfrey sprang up, knowing that this was of exceptional importance, or Joyce—the only person who knew where he was—wouldn’t have called.
‘May I take it here, sir?’
‘The blue telephone,’ said Hartwall.
Palfrey moved to a side table and picked up the receiver, aware of the intent gaze of the other two men.
‘Yes, Joyce,’ he said.
‘Sap,’ said Joyce Morgan, almost breathlessly, ‘the premises of the Middlecombe Echo have been blown up. The composing room was utterly destroyed. The reporter you talked to, Dale, was in the room.’
It was such a red-letter night for Eric Dale.
He had been in journalism since he had left school at the age of fourteen and never progressed beyond the post of chief reporter. He was utterly dedicated to local news, and for over twenty years he had worked on the Echo. In all of those years he had never had to cover a case of major importance, and now that it had come, he felt in his bones that it was one of epoch-making significance. After seeing Palfrey, he had telephoned the story of the attacks on the Z5 Chief to several London newspapers but, keeping strictly to his word, had not even hinted at the cause.
Then he had written his own story with elaborate care.
He let no one else read it, and, rather than allow it to be read at any stage before publication, he set it himself on an old Monotype machine while two Linotype compositors were busy on their more modern typesetters. The room was hot and the odour of the molten lead was sharp on the nostrils. It worked its way into one’s mouth, and then dried the tongue. He was sitting on a high stool at a sloping desk, reading some pulls, oblivious of the dozen printers and boys all about him.
Quite suddenly, the floor seemed to rise up.
Dale, pen in one hand, galley proof under the pressure of his other hand, was killed when a piece of metal from the smashed Monotype behind him crashed on to his head. Everywhere men were gasping and screaming, there was
molten metal on the floor, on hands and legs and faces—
‘So the story’s killed,’ Palfrey said bleakly into the telephone.
‘The editor was at home,’ said Joyce. ‘He told me that Dale wouldn’t let anyone, not even his boss, read what he’d said, and Dale was so trustworthy that he was given carte blanche. No proofreader saw the story, Sap. No one knows what he was going to say about the phenomenon.’
‘Did he telephone the London newspapers?’ asked Palfrey.
‘The editor says yes, but only about the attacks on you. Sap,’ went on Joyce, only to hesitate for a moment. ‘Sap, should you release the story after all?’
‘What makes you have any doubts?’ asked Palfrey. ‘You seemed so positive.’
‘I’ve thought about what harm it might possibly do, after all. And—’ She broke off.
‘Yes?’
‘They don’t want it told, do they?’
‘You mean, the perpetrator of all these outrages,’ asked Palfrey, sounding quite ingenuous. ‘No, he wouldn’t like it at all.’
‘If he simply wanted to exert power, surely he wouldn’t care,’ retorted Joyce. ‘I wonder—’
She broke off again. There was something in her silence, in the way she caught her breath, which alarmed Palfrey. He was aware of the intentness of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary as they watched him on the telephone; his apprehensiveness must have revealed itself to them.
At last, Joyce said, ‘Sap, he’s been on the telephone.’
‘The man who talked to Maddern?’ asked Palfrey, sharply.
‘Yes.’ Joyce seemed to gulp.
‘Go on,’ Palfrey urged. ‘Let’s have it.’
‘He says that if you release the story, he will infect another area, this time covering many more people,’ Joyce told him, her voice sounding far off, as if she had no strength. ‘He says that instead of a few thousand women being affected, hundreds of thousands will be, not only here but in many countries abroad.’ Joyce stopped again: she seemed to gasp for breath, but began to force words out. ‘Sap, don’t—don’t release the story. It can’t help; I’ve come to the conclusion that it can only do terrible harm.’
She was obviously in great distress, and he had no doubt at all that it was the thought of the women condemned to childlessness which affected her.
And he thought bleakly that her second thoughts must be right; that it would be better to try to discover exactly what was going on, before breaking the news. He listened with the greatest intensity as, making an obvious effort to control her emotions, Joyce went on, ‘Sap, all of the areas affected are being checked exhaustively. No other capsules have been found or reported; no girls like Sue have appeared. There is no known way in which the affliction could have spread nor the slightest indication of how it could be confined to a specified area. It is now virtually certain, from all the reports from the other afflicted areas, that contamination is not by the domestic water supply, electricity or gas. Everyone involved in every kind of distribution must be asked to think back, to help.’
‘Unless they’re told why, they’ll never begin to try,’ Palfrey reasoned. ‘And if a lot more people are told in confidence, the story is bound to leak out publicly.’
‘Oh, you stubborn fool, you’ll tell the world in spite of everything!’ she cried.
And she rang off.
Palfrey stood in the Prime Minister’s study, aware of Hartwall’s tension and of the way Keys was staring. He simply did not know what to do or say. He was virtually sure that if he told either of these men they would urge—in fact order—him to keep the story back.
The fact that they would feel so strongly did not make them right. The fact that Joyce and Dr. Simister felt so strongly did not make them right, either. But much more was involved than that. He felt strongly that the truth should be divulged, and so did Maddern: but the strength of their views did not make him right. He was at the crunch of decision.
‘Well?’ Hartwall almost barked.
‘We have been ordered not to disclose the news, under threat of the contamination of more areas,’ Palfrey stated in his calmest voice.
‘In England?’ demanded Hartwall.
‘The man who telephoned said that it would be not only here but abroad and in metropolitan districts.’
‘Douglas, you know what this means,’ said Maddison Keys, his voice sharp with excitement. ‘Nowhere else is affected yet. If we keep the news back at least until we know what the perpetrators want, the situation can’t become any worse. If we disclose it, then hundreds of thousands of more families will be affected. We can’t take that risk. But if we tell every government individually, or tell the United Nations, you can be sure that someone will talk.’
The awful thing, Palfrey kept on reminding himself, was that he could not be sure which was the right course. It wasn’t a clear-cut issue. Keys was certainly right when he said that the wrong policy could lead to utter disaster. But at least one thing was now virtually certain: the cause of the phenomenon was a human agency. Human beings could control a woman’s ability to conceive a child: the most intimate, the most personal of all decisions could be taken away from husband and wife. And it was possible, it might even be probable, that if he held his peace and was silent, he might find the men involved, their purpose, and their method.
Hartwall finished his brandy and then said abruptly, ‘I still think you have to make the decision, Palfrey. But I am inclined to the view that the facts should be disclosed.’
‘Keep silent, or I will create barrenness among many hundreds of thousands,’ the man who had warned Joyce had said.
From the beginning of his knowledge, Palfrey had been under deadly attack—obviously, to silence him.
If those who could cause this horror were so anxious not to tell the world, then surely the world should be told.
What certainty was there that other areas of this country and of many others were not at the beginning of a cycle which would result, in seven or eight or nine months time, in the same dread effect as in Middlecombe, Tan-y-bas and Wetherly?
Make up your mind, he told himself. The decision’s been left to you.
Chapter Nine
DECISION
Palfrey thought, I need everybody’s help; everybody’s.
And he thought, this is a matter for every single human being to decide for himself. It isn’t a question of saving lives; of political freedom; it is an issue which is absolutely fundamental to all men and all women. No one has any right to make such decisions for them, and they can only make decisions if they know the facts.
He knew, as this raced through his mind, what he would have to do—there was really no alternative. He felt calmer than he had for a long time as he said, ‘Will you make a statement yourself, sir?’
‘Tell the people?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think—’
‘Douglas,’ interrupted Keys with passionate intensity, ‘you mustn’t do this. Any young woman who wants a baby and doesn’t catch will think it’s because of this phenomenon, will think she never will conceive. Think of the awful social consequences. We’re in an age of sexual permissiveness, the pill has made promiscuity safe and relatively easy, but this—why, it will give absolute sexual freedom, licence to everyone in the land. It will be utterly disastrous.’
‘I don’t think you are thinking straight,’ said Hartwall. He was now much more decisive in manner than Palfrey expected. ‘If this affliction became nationwide—’
‘But the man behind it says he’ll make it effective in a city if we talk! Three rural areas already affected, now a city—I tell you it will bring a sexual revolution in the country, all the bonds of marriage will be broken, all the bounds of
decency will be down. I beg you not to make any statement.’
‘As I see it, I don’t have any choice,’ said Hartwall, crisply. ‘I agree with Palfrey.’
He broke off when there was a tap at the door, glanced towards it and said irritably, ‘I told them not to disturb me.’ There was another tap, so soon after the first that it carried a note of insistence, and he raised his voice, sounding very angry. ‘What is it?’
The door opened and the golden-haired secretary came in, looking flustered, carrying a single sheet of paper in his hand.
‘I thought you ought to see this, sir.’
Hartwall almost snatched the paper from his hand, began to read and went absolutely still. Palfrey on one side and Keys on the other moved so as to read the paper over his shoulders. The words PRESS RELEASE were stamped across one corner in bright red, and there were three short paragraphs centred on the paper, obviously done on a duplicating machine. The corner heading was:
South West News Agency, Bristol 21.
Is The Human Race Dying Out?
In several parts of the British Isles and we believe in several other parts of the Western World, whole areas, affecting tens of thousands of women, have become a human desert. There are no children on the way in any of these places. The women are barren or the men are sterile.
If this process spreads then the future of the whole human race is at stake. In fact the human race could be dying out.
Secret investigations by Z5, the international organisation led by Dr. Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey have failed to find any explanation. Dr. Palfrey himself has been the subject of murderous assaults since his investigations began.
Hartwall put the paper down slowly and glanced at Palfrey with a resigned, even a quizzical air.
‘Someone jumped the gun,’ he remarked.
‘Did you release that?’ demanded Keys, in cold anger.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Palfrey said sharply. ‘I’ve never heard of this South West News Agency.’ In one way he was relieved, for the responsibility had been snatched out of his hands, but who had made the release? Which newspapers would use it? And what would the consequences be? He had envisaged a carefully worded statement to break the ice; this would have the effect of a bombshell.
‘Where did it come from?’ asked Hartwall.
‘It was delivered with a selection of the usual nightly Press Releases,’ the golden-haired secretary said. ‘None of the others is significant.’
‘Get the agency on the telephone,’ Palfrey growled.
Neither Hartwall nor Keys spoke, but read the release again, standing side by side. Palfrey stood by the telephone until it began to ring; in a flash he had the receiver at his ear. Controlling his voice, he said, ‘Is that the South West News Agency?’
‘Yes, but—’ a man began.
‘I am speaking for the Home Secretary,’ Palfrey interrupted. ‘Where did you obtain and why did you send out the sterility story?’
‘But we didn’t!’ the man cried. ‘It was added to one of our releases but no one here knows who did it. If I’d seen it I would have killed the story stone dead.’
Palfrey said, ‘Try to find out who slipped it in, will you?’ He rang off and reported to the others. Keys was badly shaken, Hartwall took it much more phlegmatically than Palfrey had expected.
‘Well, the decision has been made for us,’ he said, ‘and perhaps—’
He broke off as a man shouted out from beyond the door ‘It’s on television!’ Almost at once Hartwall spun round and switched on a television in a corner, a set which Palfrey hadn’t noticed. There was a tense pause, over surprisingly quickly, before first the voice and then a picture came.
‘ “—the future of the human race”, goes on the statement, “is at stake. In fact the human race could be dying out”.’
There was a pause and then in the background a picture of Palfrey. Only Keys glanced round at him: Keys was as antagonistic as Simister had been.
‘According to this statement—and I quote again—secret investigations by Z5, the international organisation led by Dr. Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey have failed to result in any explanation. Dr. Palfrey himself has been the victim of murderous assaults since his investigations began.’
The picture of Palfrey faded.
The announcer, youthful and rugged-looking, braced his shoulders.
‘And now for the weather report, by—’
The Prime Minister switched off and the screen went dark. Someone had closed the door and only the secretary, Keys, Palfrey and the Prime Minister were in the room. Keys was muttering to himself, ‘They should never have done it. It will cause alarm and despondency throughout the country.’ In a louder voice he went on, ‘You were wrong. Now perhaps you’ll realise it.’ He drew a deep breath, faced Hartwall and said with great precision and clarity, ‘Douglas, I can no longer serve in your Government. I shall send my formal letter of resignation in the morning.’
Hartwall contemplated him for several seconds before responding, ‘I hope you won’t, Maddison. But if you do, of course, I shall accept with regret. I hope you’ll sleep on it. Palfrey—’ he turned to face Palfrey squarely’—the newspapers will be after you in earnest, now. Do you need any help? Or any further protection?’
‘I think I can cope,’ Palfrey assured him. ‘As for danger, presumably now that the story has been released, I’ll be left alone for a while.’
He smiled. The Prime Minister held out a hand, gripped his firmly, and said, ‘Good night. Keep me in closest touch.’
Palfrey went out, leaving the two politicians together. A footman opened the front door for him. Policemen stood like a barricade across the front of No. 1
0, and a big crowd gathered in the narrow street and a larger one in Whitehall. Immediately Palfrey appeared flash bulbs lit up the scene and half-blinded him, television cameras whirred, men and women began to hurl questions. Palfrey realised it would be impossible to get through without making a statement and answering some questions, and he might as well get the interrogation over.
So he stood with his back to the door of No. 10 and began to talk.
Nearly two hundred miles away, almost at that same instant, the girl whom Maddern knew as Susan or Sue, also began to talk. She had been unconscious or asleep until an hour ago. Mrs. Witherspoon had taken her to the bathroom and then prepared a light meal, a plain omelette, fruit salad and cream with cheese and cracker biscuits. Now, Maddern sat opposite the girl as they drank coffee. He had not sent for Congleton the psychiatrist because he thought that two strange men might make her nervous and even more difficult to cope with.
It was hard to believe she had been so violent, so vicious.
She was rested and looked unbelievably lovely – doll-like. Her features were so perfect and her skin so free from blemish that it was virtually impossible to believe that she was real. Her eyes, violet in colour, were fringed by sweeping dark lashes; the outline of her lips, her nose, her eyebrows was like the work of a master, achieving perfection.
Her shoulders, so square; her bosom, young and provocative; her waist, tiny and merging into hips that were much more than boyish. And her dress was like a skin, even where it fitted loosely. He had never seen such delicate material. She sat in a big armchair – or rather, a chair which was made to look big by her tiny, elfin figure – —the fragility of her head enhanced by a background of centuries-old oak beams.
She sipped the coffee while looking at him. If he had to use a single word to describe her attitude then, it would be ‘demure’.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘do you really feel better?’
‘Oh, much, thank you. Much better.’