The Dirigibles of Death Page 2

  And as I took the trouble to explain to Doctor Grayson, while I busied myself with a spanner and loosened the nuts on the tube's plates, such evidently uncouth, thug-like beings could not possibly have handled and navigated the airship. Someone, some intelligent, skilled man or men must have been aboard, and this fact added greatly to the mystery of the whole affair. Thought of this feature caused me to marvel at the fact that, as far as I had seen, there were no controls to the ship. There was no cockpit, no bridge, no instrument-board, no levers nor wheels, no dials—nothing that hinted at controlling the vessel—and I forgot everything else in my amazement at this discovery. But I had an even greater surprise awaiting me. As I at last removed the plate and peered within the cylinder, expecting to see the motors of the ship, I uttered a sharp cry of astonishment. There were no motors visible!

  Instead, I saw a complex arrangement of wires, magnets, switches and other electrical apparatus. For a moment I was non-plussed, and then it dawned upon me that the ship was propelled by electric motors. Filled with curiosity I called to my chauffeur—an excellent mechanic and a really clever electrician—and together we proceeded to open up the cylindrical container throughout its entire length. While occupied with this task I was aware of some excitement in the crowd that now completely blocked all traffic in the street. Presently Doctor Grayson returned and informed me that a party of picnickers at Netley Heath had been attacked by three fiends who answered the description given by the farmer from East Clacton. One man had been killed, another badly wounded, and the two women of the party had been violated and wantonly mutilated by their attackers who had bitten off the murdered girls' ears.

  The details of the affair were far too horrible and loathsome to repeat, and so terrible was their experience that both women had lost their reason and were now raving maniacs. The wounded man, however, had been able to give a very good description of the creatures. They were, he declared, almost nude, were covered with sores or ulcers, and were as horrible in appearance as fields from the pit. All were huge, powerful creatures, all had deformed, horrible features and all had the heads of idiots. Two of them, he declared, were negroes or blacks of some sort, and one, he had noticed, had a great cavity eaten into one side of the face as if by some powerful acid. He also told, shuddering and sobbing with horror at the memory, of having seen one of the creatures fall upon the body of his companion, and with its teeth tear the reeking flesh from the limbs and actually devour it.

  Doctor Grayson paled and his voice shook as he told me these details. "I cannot imagine who or what these fiends incarnate are," he declared. "The body we found at the Gypsy caravan was afflicted with Yaws— a terribly virulent and contagious malady of the tropics. These three evidently were suffering from the same disease, and the fact that two were blacks would indicate they were all from some tropical country. And I am now convinced that the one we found dead was also a negro—an albino. Thank heaven, now we know where or near where they are we can soon apprehend them or destroy them. And thank God there cannot be more than four. The entire countryside is aroused, all available police, and posses of citizens are scouring the woods, the heaths and the parks, and I expect at any moment to learn of the capture of the fiends. But even so I have most dire misgivings, Major. If the creatures have not spread their loathsome disease, it will be by the merest chance they have not. Beyond any question the two women who were attacked will contract it; I have no doubt that this poor wounded chap will be afflicted with it, and I should not be at all surprised if the two boys who were held up on the Hogback had been infected when scratched by their assailants."

  "Rotten," I commented. "But are you sure it's the Yaws? And is there nothing to be done to cure it—to prevent it from spreading?"

  Doctor Grayson shook his head. "In my younger days," he informed me, "I was attached to the Department of Research of Tropical Diseases in the West Indies, and later in Africa. I think I know Yaws when I see the disease, and as far as I or any other medico knows, it is incurable. Of course, it might be something else—leprosy is at times indistinguishable by a superficial examination, or some one of the innumerable filarial diseases of the tropics. But whatever it is, I dread the thought of what may follow if these creatures remain longer at large."

  "By Jove!" I cried. "It is a pretty how-de-do. By the way, did you learn anything from the body of the beast killed on the Hogback?"

  "I haven't examined it personally," replied the doctor, "but Doctor Mell of Guildford was conversing with me a few moments ago and he tells me it was that of a mulatto or octoroon, that the cranium—or rather what was left of it after it had received both barrels of a twenty-gauge shotgun at close range—appeared to be that of a maniac, and that the creature was afflicted with some sort of ulcerated sores. Evidently all are alike in these features."

  "Bally rotten, the whole business," I exclaimed. "Looks as if some insane asylum was dumping its ulcerated, homicidal maniacs on poor old England. But how did they manage to get here? That's the question that's bothering me. No doubt they arrived in this ship —the pigsty down below is just the sort of den for such brutes—but they could never have operated this ship alone. Someone of intelligence must have been with them. But where the devil has he gone?"

  Doctor Grayson shook his head. "God alone knows the answer to a lot of questions," he replied. "But—"

  An exclamation from Rawlins, my mechanic, interrupted his words, and I hurried to Rawlins' side. He had removed the plates from a large section of the tube and had exposed the powerful compact motors that operated the propellers. But it was not these that had aroused his most intense interest and excitement.

  "This ship was operated by radio, sir," he announced in almost awed tones. "See here, sir. Yonder's the relays; there are the selective devices."

  For a moment I studied the intricate mechanism intently, filled with interest. I had, of course, witnessed demonstrations of radio-controlled and operated vessels, airships and even an airplane. But in no case had the tests been very successful, and in no case had it been possible to control a mechanism at any considerable distance from the transmitting station. Yet if Rawlins was right, and if Doctor Grayson was not mistaken, this ship had come a great distance—perhaps thousands of miles—by means of radio control from some far distant station. It seemed impossible, incredible, and the more I examined the mechanism, the more I was convinced that Rawlins was mistaken. To be sure, there was no question that the propellers were driven by motors which, superficially at least, appeared like electric motors. And at first sight the objects he had pointed outdid seem to be relays and selective devices, but I could detect none of the appliances that are typical of radio control. The thing needed real study, expert examination and a complete investigation such as could not be conducted here in the open air. So, instructing Rawlins to replace the cover plates, I climbed to the earth and telephoned to Aldershot for a couple of lorries and a detail of men to be sent at once to dismantle and remove the airship.

  Almost coincident with their arrival, word was received by Inspector Maidstone, who was still in Ripley, informing him that the savage being—obviously the survivor of the pair that had attacked the motorists on the Hogback—had been surrounded in a thicket near Compton. The man had rushed like a wild beast at the police, and so maniacal was his fury, so terrible his rage, so demoniacal his strength, that the constables had been forced to shoot him in self defense. Even as it was, three of the men had been seriously wounded, and not one had escaped without lacerations from the fiendish thing's nails and teeth.

  As I was thereafter most busily engaged in superintending the examination of the airship's mechanism at Aldershot, I had no first-hand information of the series of events that occurred during the next few days. But the news that came to me through the press and the Air Ministry was most astounding and disconcerting. On the morning following the discovery of the mysterious ship at Ripley, two more, precisely like the first, were found. One near Hayward's Heath in Sussex, the other at S
utton Valance in Kent. In both cases the gondolas were found open, in both cases the interiors presented the same conditions as had the first, and in both cases horrible crimes and most revolting murders occurred in the vicinity of the spots where the ships landed. Moreover, as in the first case, the murders were committed by loathsome, ferocious maniacs, apparently negroes or mulattoes who, it was deduced, had arrived in the mysterious aircraft.

  By this time the entire country had become thoroughly aroused. The police had been armed in all rural districts, all citizens who went about the country were in constant fear and trembling of an attack, and everyone who could secure firearms went prepared to shoot down the terrible fiendish beings on sight. Fortunately those who had—supposedly—arrived in the ship that landed at Hayward's Heath, were destroyed before they had committed many atrocities. Two of them attempted to hold up a Brighton motor-coach and were run down and crushed beneath the vehicle's wheels, the driver of the coach having exhibited great presence of mind by swerving directly towards the creatures who, apparently, had no fear of the ponderous vehicle. Two more were gored and killed by a savage bull as they crossed a pasture, and the remaining two (I say remaining two as only six were seen and no others appeared after the six had been killed) were destroyed by farmers who, armed with guns, were patrolling the lanes in the vicinity. Those that had landed at Sutton Valance, on the other hand, were still at large, and almost hourly stories of new atrocities committed by them were reported by the newspapers.

  By the morning of the third day, more than a dozen of the strange aircraft had dropped upon English soil, and each had vomited its crew of maniacal negro murderers. Some had landed on the Norfolk coast, some in the Midland, others in the western counties, and one had dropped to earth within a few miles of Windsor. From everywhere came terrifying reports of murder and mutilations by the horde of revolting, terrible beings who had arrived in these silent, mystifying dirigibles. England was being cursed with them, the country was in a reign of terror, and although police, citizens and soldiers hunted them down like wild beasts and accounted for dozens of them, still many were roaming the country, attacking everyone they met, killing and mutilating and—so Doctor Grayson and other eminent medical men gravely feared—were spreading the loathsome diseases with which they were afflicted.

  In the meantime we had dissected the complicated machinery of the first arrived airship, and although no one—not even Sir Bertram Fielding, the greatest living authority on radio-controlled vessels—could make head or tail of the apparatus, all—including Sir Bertram —agreed that it was not actuated by radio as we knew it, but was operated and controlled by some unknown form of vibratory wave akin to the electro-magnetic waves but quite distinct. With so many of the vessels available, we could afford to tear them to bits, and we went at it with a will, for, as far as we could see, our only hope of preventing the things from landing, or of destroying them, was to learn the secrets of their mechanisms and to install some device for controlling them from our end so as to deflect them and force them to drop into the sea. Possibly I have not made my meaning clear, for being so accustomed to writing in purely technical terms, I find it a bit difficult to express myself in ordinary popular language. What I mean to say is this: we all (meaning the officials of the Air Ministry and of the R. A. F.) were convinced that the damnable ships with their living cargoes of fiends were being sent with devilish ingenuity and intention to England; that they were being dispatched from some one point abroad, by some enemy of the British, and were of course propelled and directed by some form of vibratory wave. Hence, if we could learn the secret of these waves; if we could, by intensive study and observation, discover how to transmit them, and how to operate the ships from our station, we could—being nearer them—divert them, and then, when over the sea, force them down. It must not, however, be assumed that we had gone about solving this problem without taking every precaution and availing ourselves of every resource to combat and destroy the things before they dropped on England. From the very first—or rather after the second and third ships had arrived—the entire available air forces of Great Britain had been ordered into active service. Hundreds, thousands of planes cruised over England day and night constantly searching for the black, metallic, death-carrying dirigibles. Great searchlights played constantly upon the sky from dark until dawn. A cordon of swift destroyers had been drawn about the coasts, and every effort had been made to detect and destroy the terrible things before they dropped to the earth. And although two of the dirigibles had been spotted and brought down—one off Deal and the other between Chichester and Midhurst—others got safely through our lines. Being black, carrying no light, emitting no roar of motor-exhausts, the things were next to invisible at night. And they moved with incredible speed.

  Several that were spotted and chased outdistanced our fastest scout planes as if they had been standing still, and Captain Morris, who sighted one of the things over Maidstone and gave chase in his Napier Rocket (capable of traveling more than three hundred miles an hour), reported that the dirigible gained on him rapidly and soon vanished in the darkness.

  The two that had been brought down were destroyed more by accident than by design. The one over Deal had been sighted by an anti-aircraft crew and by a very lucky shot had been brought down to fall into the sea. The other had been spotted by a bomber, whose crew, by the merest chance, had dropped a bomb upon the thing as it had flashed, at terrific speed, beneath the plane.

  But even though the dirigible crashed to the earth in a deserted part of the South Downs, its destruction was of no avail, for when the plane that had destroyed the thing landed, the gondola was found intact with the door open and the occupants gone.

  Our only hope then, lay in either tracing the dirigibles to their source or in discovering their secrets, both matters that would necessitate slow, patient, unremitting study, and that would require a great deal of time. And time was most important, for nightly more and more of the things were landing, daily more and more people were being murdered, mutilated. Although, by the end of the first week, the fiendish maniacs who arrived in the night seldom remained alive more than a few hours—so well was the country patrolled by police, armed citizens and the army—still, in the few hours they were at large they murdered hundreds of people, wounded hundreds more and committed every conceivable atrocity.

  Inspector Maidstone Tells the Story

  As Doctor Grayson and Major Leighton have mentioned, I was called to Ripley in Surrey, by the local constable, Robert Moore, who reported the arrival of a mysterious, unidentified airship, and the equally mysterious murders of four occupants of the Antelope Inn and of five unknown Gypsies who had been encamped with their caravan near Cobham. As Doctor Grayson has already described all the essential details of the murders and the conditions existing before my arrival, it is not necessary for me to repeat them. Neither is it essential that I should more than briefly mention the dastardly attack upon the picnickers at Netley Heath and the attack upon the motorists at the Hogback.

  I arrived at Ripley to find Doctor Richard Morrison, the Guildford coroner, already on the spot. He had, in fact, commenced his examination of the bodies of the unfortunate inmates of the Antelope. As Doctor Grayson has mentioned, and as he pointed out to Doctor Morrison, the wounds that had caused death were most unusual, and it was evident to all of us, after a brief examination, that they had been inflicted, not by any weapon, but by the murderers' bare hands. Possibly we would have doubted this had not Doctor Grayson told us of the discovery of the dead body of a repulsively horrible man at the scene of the Gypsy murders. His description of the dead man's talon-like nails, his powerful teeth—still holding (as we discovered later) fragments of human flesh in their grip, and the condition of the Gypsies' bodies, convinced us that the fellow and his companions were ferocious homicidal maniacs. Moreover, we agreed with Doctor Grayson that he (with the others) had arrived by the airship.

  It seemed a very simple affair from the detective's poi
nt of view. We knew, or assumed we knew, who the murderers were, one of them (of course, at that time we had no means of knowing if there were others) was dead and we had merely to trail the others (if any), arrest them and the whole affair was at an end. In fact, the greatest mysteries to be solved appeared to be the origin and identity of the dirigible and the identity of the murderers, also why they had arrived and from where. But I soon found that to trace the murderers and to arrest them were far from easy tasks. I had thought that strangers, so easily recognized, so remarkable in appearance as these must be (judging from the one whose body had been found by Doctor Grayson) would be easily traced. And I assumed that once they were located it would be a simple matter to place them under arrest. So accustomed are we of the British police to meeting with little or no resistance, the average British citizen having an inborn respect for the representatives of the law, that it did not occur to me that we would have any difficulties in this respect. Neither did I (at the time) take into consideration that the men we had to deal with were (as far as we could judge by the one killed by the Gypsies) maniacs, and hence would not recognize the police as such and would not be subject to the same regard for the police authority as sane persons. And I was very soon to learn that the only traces of their presence left by these malefactors were in the form of heinous crimes. Before I had even time to call up headquarters and set the machinery of the law in motion, Benjamin Butler, a farmer of West Clandon, arrived in Ripley and reported having been attacked by the maniacs near East Clandon.