The Dirigibles of Death (3 page)

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 Sutton 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 point 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.

As Doctor Grayson has described, Butler escaped, and I at once got into communication with the constables at East and West Clandon, Clandon Park, Merrow, Albury, Gomshall, Westcott, Dorking, Mickleham, Plesdon, and East Horsley, thus completely encircling the district with patrols and (so I thought) making certain that the murderous thugs would be apprehended within an hour or two. I had scarcely finished giving my instructions when word came of the attack on the motorists on the Hogback, and I at once communicated with the constabulary of all towns and villages in that vicinity. Feeling now confident that the net had been spread for the quarry, I interrogated Doctor Grayson at greater length, interviewed Moore the local constable, talked with Jared Dunne the mail-carrier, with the man Timothy Newbald, and had a word or two with Major Leighton who had just arrived with his chauffeur to examine the airship. While speaking with him, I was summoned to the telephone and received the astounding and horrifying news of the rapine and murder committed at Netley Heath. Here the murderers had appeared within a mile of East Clandon and in the midst of the cordon of police. I had ordered to search the entire district. And they had gotten away without leaving a trace. I immediately ordered additional men to the neighborhood and was preparing to take charge of the man-hunt in person, when I received the comforting news of the murderer at Compton having been killed, although I regretted exceedingly the injuries the police had received in their efforts to capture him alive. Obviously the beings were maniacs and could not be treated like ordinary mortals, and I hurriedly got in touch with the authorities, secured orders for revolvers and ammunition to be distributed among all the members of the police force in the neighborhood, and gave orders to all constables (as well as private citizens) to shoot the maniacs on sight.

It was, I admit, a high-handed proceeding, but I considered that the conditions warranted it; but as usual certain meddlesome individuals with a mawkish sentiment for all criminals got me into very hot water, indeed. No sooner had news of my actions been spread, than extra papers blared the facts in glaring headlines, and within half an hour I was peremptorily summoned to London.

It seemed that a tremendous uproar had been created in certain circles, and Scotland Yard had been swamped with protests, denunciations and appeals—all in no measured terms, voicing opinions of an Inspector of Police who would order irresponsible, helpless maniacs shot down in cold blood. In vain I protested that these men were red-handed, vicious, terrible murderers; that they were beyond all pale of the law or common humanity; that to attempt to capture them would result in the deaths of honest, innocent men, and that any citizen meeting them and not killing them on sight would (in all likelihood) be killed (or worse) himself. No, the law gave me no authority to order any man killed (except in self-defense). That was a matter for judge and jury. My duty was to capture them (even if by so doing lives were sacrificed). I was severely reprimanded and requested to resign from the force. Cut before I could reply, my chief answered a telephone call, and instantly his expression changed. "My God!" I heard him mutter, "It's terrible, horrible!"

He replaced the instrument and turned to me. "From Hawley," he exclaimed, "three of the—the maniacs raided the village not fifteen minutes ago. They killed sixteen people and wounded a dozen more. And—God, Inspector, it's too horrible—the fiends were seen eating—actually devouring—the bodies! And they got clean away."

"Sorry," I said tersely. "If my orders had not been countermanded, this could not have happened, but as the murderers—cannibals—are poor, deluded, helpless maniacs not responsible for their acts, I suppose we can afford to permit useful citizens to be destroyed in the name of humanity."