The War of the Worlds Murder

by Max Allan Collins

  A harried switchboard girl sounded like she was doing a skit on the Jack Benny program. “No, madam...no, sir—we don’t know anything about an explosion in New Jersey.... Men from Mars?... Yeah, we know it’s on the radio, but...it didn’t happen.... Nothing’s going on, I tell you!... No madam...No sir...there ain’t no men from Mars!”

  Nearby, another city desk assistant, frazzled beyond belief, was telling an official from the police commissioner’s office, “It’s just a phony—a radio play!”

  The assistant city desk man finally hung up, then turned to Gross and pointed an accusatory finger. “You’re the one always touting this guy Welles! You either get CBS on the line, or get your tail over there and see what in God’s name’s going on.”

  Gross walked into the radio room and two phones jangled; he picked up a receiver in either hand.

  A female voice said, “Are they abandoning New York?”

  “No, lady, it’s just a play.”

  “Oh no it isn’t!” she screamed, and hung up.

  On the other wire was a guy from the Red Cross. “I hear they’re broadcasting about a terrible catastrophe in New Jersey—do you know where it is, so we can get our people out there?”

  “It’s only Orson Welles—he’s on with a fantasy, tonight.”

  “That can’t be! My wife just called and said thousands have been killed.”

  Gross reassured the man that the show was just a show, hung up, and his young female assistant bounded in, looking far less attractive than usual, her hair tendrils of despair, her eyes pools of frustration.

  “My God, Mr. Gross! These calls have been driving me batty!”

  The radio reviewer said nothing, merely headed for the door.

  His assistant nearly shrieked, “You’re not going to leave me all alone with these...these phones, are you?”

  “Yes,” he said, already halfway out.

  In moments he was on the street, hailing another cab.

  Climbing in, Gross realized the cab’s radio was tuned to WEAF.

  “Put CBS on,” Gross said, “would you?”

  The cabbie did so.

  “It’s something moving...solid metal, kind of a shield-like affair rising up out of the cylinder.... Going higher and higher. What?... It’s, it’s standing on legs...actually rearing up on a sort of metal framework. Now it’s reaching above the trees and the searchlights are on it. Hold on!”

  “God almighty!” the cab driver said.

  “It’s just fiction,” Gross said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You don’t see any panic-stricken people running around the streets, do you, bud?”

  And as if to prove the reviewer wrong, the cab passed a movie house on Third Avenue, from which half a dozen women and children streamed, while men poured out of nearby bars, to take root on the sidewalks and stare at the sky.

  On Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, a woman sat on the curb, crying and screaming, while a cop in the middle of the street stood mobbed by agitated citizens.

  “Fiction or not,” the cabbie said, “something the hell’s goin’ on!”

  And yet when Gross was dropped off at the Columbia Broadcasting Building, no sign of outer or inner turmoil could be seen—the usual number of pedestrians strolled by, traffic seemed about normal.

  No one would ever guess that this was the County Seat of Hysteria in the United States, right now.

  In six weeks, the American Institute of Public Opinion would estimate 9,000,000 Americans had heard the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, a majority tuning in too late to catch the disclaimer opening. The Chapmans, the Dorns, James Roberts and his friend Bobby, Sheldon Judcroft and Professor Barrington, and the troopers at the HQ in upstate New York were among the estimated 1,700,000 listeners who believed they were hearing actual newscasts, including the following one:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.”

  State troopers Chuck and Carmine made it back to headquarters, despite a highway filled with lunatics driving north like the devil was on their tails.

  But HQ was no better. Everyone was doing their best to follow Corporal Stevens’s orders; previously cool in any crisis, the corporal was on edge, snapping at his men wildly.

  The quartermaster sergeant had come in from home to issue the troopers rifles, machine guns and ammunition, and he, too, was caught up in it, yelling like a boot-camp drill instructor.

  Then Lt. Flanders showed up. Ol’ Flannel Mouth had loaded up his car with household possessions, leaving room for his wife, a blowsy middle-aged blonde who had a crucifix in one hand and a bottle of rye in the other (she would alternately kiss the cross and swig the bottle).

  The lieutenant took over from the duty corporal, who had clearly been enjoying the power and disliked having it taken away from him. After Lt. Flanders gave several orders that Corporal Stevens disagreed with, the latter decided he’d had enough of the former.

  “Lieutenant, I know we’re all going to die,” the corporal said. “And I’ve been waiting seven long years to tell you something.”

  “Well, spit it out, man! We have things to do.”

  They were outside the front of HQ, the troopers all around, weapons in hand, waiting for their orders.

  The corporal was saying, “Nothing is more urgent than me saying this: you are a flannel-mouthed son of a bitch, no-good, rotten bastard. I have half a mind to grab you by your miserable neck and squeeze it till your tongue turns black.”

  That wouldn’t take long, as the lieutenant was already turning purple; in the background, his wife toasted the corporal with her rye bottle, in “hear hear!” manner.

  Corporal Stevens had more: “I’d be doing everybody in this troop a favor by shoving this .45 up your tail and pulling the trigger. But I just hate the thought of wasting a good bullet on your miserable carcass, when we have an enemy to fight.”

  The corporal folded his arms, held his chin high and waited for a response.

  The purple left the lieutenant’s face. He seemed to be working hard to retain his composure.

  All the men had gathered around as the confrontation had built, and now Lt. Flanders said to them, “Men—this is no time to pull old chestnuts out of the fire. Let’s let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, that’s what I’ve always said.”

  If so, no one assembled here remembered hearing it.

  “Let us pool our energies,” the lieutenant said rousingly, “and fight the common enemy that threatens us. We will make our last stand on the hill. Get to your posts.... You men with machine guns will concentrate your fire on the approaches to headquarters, and you men with rifles will make the last-ditch defense from high ground.”

  Shouts of support and even applause came from the troopers—with the notable exception of the stiff-necked corporal.

  Then the lieutenant showed his true colors: as his troopers were busy setting up the defenses, he got into his car with his missus and roared off into the foggy night. Heading north.

  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 22nd Field 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.

  Recommended routes of escape were shared with listeners.

  When the phone rang, the Dorn sisters—kneeling before their living-room radio as if taking communion—yelped in surprise and fear.

  Miss Jane rose, patted her sister’s shoulder, and went to answer it, in the nearby hallway.

  Her friend Mrs. Roberta Henderson, a third-grade teacher, was calling to ask about the upcoming bake sale. Could Jane and Eleanor provide their usual delicious cherry pies?

  “Haven’t you heard?” Miss Jane asked, frantically, amazed that her friend could be caught up in such mundane matters at a time like this.

  “Heard?”

  Miss Jane’s words tumbled out on top of each other, uncharacteristically, as she told of the news reports of the Martian invasion.

  “You can’t be serious, Jane—that’s the radio.”
/>   “Of course it’s the radio!”

  “No...no, I mean, it’s just a play.”

  “A...play? Why, that’s nonsense! It’s, it’s...news!”

  “No—just a play. A clever play. Jane, you need to settle down. Is Eleanor handy?”

  “She’s in the living room. Praying. Roberta, surely you understand that the forces of God are overpowering us, and we are at last being given our deserved punishment for all our evil ways.”

  “Hmm-huh. Listen to me, Jane. Call the newspaper office. Promise me you will.”

  “Well...all right.”

  “Do it now.”

  Miss Jane said good-bye, hung up, and asked the operator to connect her with the local paper.

  “We’re getting a lot of calls,” a male voice said. “It’s just a radio show. Kind of a...practical joke.”

  “Well, it’s not very funny!”

  “I agree with you, lady. Have a happy Hallowe’en!”

  “No thank you! It’s a pagan celebration!”

  “Ain’t it though. Good night.”

  Miss Jane went into the living room and, as Miss Eleanor looked up at her like a child, shared what she’d learned.

  Soon they were sitting in their rockers, the radio switched off.

  Miss Eleanor cleared her throat and said, “I’m glad I asked for forgiveness, even if I didn’t have to.”

  Miss Jane shared that sentiment, adding, “It was a good opportunity to atone for our sins. The end will come, and those who have freely indulged will face a horrible reckoning.”

  “It is the life after this life which is important,” her sister added.

  “I don’t mind death,” Miss Jane said, “but I do want to die forgiven.”

  The two women smiled at each other, serenely. They again began to knit. In silence.

  But within themselves, they were furious—though they were not sure why. A vague sense enveloped them that they had been duped by the sinful world.

  Well, the joke was on the sinners. Though the Martians hadn’t come, one day sheets of God’s vengeful fire would sweep over this wretched land.

  And the girls had that, at least, to look forward to.

  Gibson was sitting in a chair behind John Houseman, who sat between stopwatch-watcher Paul Stewart and the sound engineer. That polished scarecrow, CBS exec Davidson Taylor, stepped in, his expression grave.