The Man Who Stopped at Nothing (1951) Read online

  THE MAN WHO STOPPED AT NOTHING

  Paul W.Falrman Illustrated by Lao Ramon Summers and Ralph Castenir Two worlds were struggling grimly for possession of his limp body. But Dorn didn’t mind. His soul was too occupied enjoying the luscious nude picking her wardrobe in Swank’s store window.

  Front cover painting by Ed Valigursky, from a scene in “The Man Who Stopped At Nothing”

  Dorn did a double-take. How could this girl be calmly undressing in a store window?

  THE THOUGHT pattern during the split second before impact was of academic interest to Dorn. He had never imagined so much could go through the human brain in so short a time.

  First there was the certainty that nothing could be done, The approaching car—hurtling through the night—was dead ahead on the harrow road; an invisible demon with two flaming, seal-beam eyes…The knowledge that he could do nothing whatever to save his own life came, strangely enough, as somewhat, of a relief to Dorn. At least, he thought, I won’t have to make a decision and then regret having been wrong.

  After making this observation he thought next, with satisfaction, of how he had paid up his life insurance only a week previously. That was good. Vicky should be able to clear things up with the forty thousand dollars she would have to play with. Pat and Laura would be out of high school next year, and then maybe Vicky would go back to her old job at the radio station. It would still be open, of course. And Felix could get another job.

  His family properly disposed of, Dorn allowed himself the luxury of a few personal thoughts while the two headlights bearing down upon him grew brighter, like the eyes of a beast leaping at its prey.

  All in all, he’d had a good life. He’d married young and was now thirty-five—or was it thirty-six?—and would leave society two fine children and a raven-haired wife who would make a very attractive widow. No doubt some discerning male would snap Vicky up at the first opportunity; if not for heir looks, which were still mighty potent, then at least for the respectable chunk of money she could bring along.

  Now, with the crash imminent, Dorn became the victim of certain natural regrets. He admitted he wasn’t ready to die and it was all so unnecessary. Traveling a deserted country road at this speed was damn foolishness. Just because he’d lost his way and was a few minutes off schedule, he hadn’t been justified in risking his neck.

  But then, he thought petulantly, what about the other guy? A congenital idiot beyond ail doubt. Who but a fool would come around a corner on a dark night at such insane speed? At least he himself was on a straight-away and not doing much more than sixty. And he did have an appointment. Well—maybe not exactly an appointment, but at least a place to go.

  That other goon was out joy-riding, no doubt. Just think, of it! A lamebrain out on a country road doing seventy just for the hell of it!

  The laws weren’t strict enough. That was the trouble. Half the drivers in this country should have their licenses pulled. That and that alone would make the roads safe for decent drivers. Solid citizens who raised families, provided for them and had a right to a few days relaxation in the mountains.

  It was a hell of a note when—

  CRASH!!

  PROFESSOR JAN LIMPUS loved loneliness—enjoyed darkness—was enamored of melancholy places and thin sickle-moons that threw dim eerie light. He hated people, crowded communities, and critics; critics most of all. And because he’d never met a human being who did not criticize him and his viewpoints, it could be safely said that he hated everybody.

  Criticism of the professor through the years had been varied and sometimes long-winded. But short observations had been dropped now and again that neatly summed up the bulk of public and private complaint against the thin, wild-eyed, leather-faced Limpus.

  Statements such as: “You’re strictly for the birds, Prof.”

  “Fve met dopes, and dopes, but speaking of dopes…”

  “Why don’t they lock you up?”

  “I saw a grade-B movie once with a screw-ball doctor in it. And you know something? You could have played the part a lot better.”

  By an odd coincidence, this last observation had filled Jan Limpus with pride. It so happened he’d seen the same horror picture and had, thenceforth, used the mad doctor as his model. He’d worked hard to become the real-life prototype of the insane experimenter who had died in a convenient fire at the end of the picture.

  Of course, Jan Limpus would have had little trouble in making the role more convincing than had the Hollywood actor, because Jan was mad as a hatter to begin with and that helped a great deal.

  He’d gone into the hills with his dangerous ideas and his equipment and he fared forth from his lonely domicile only on the darkest nights. Lack of illumination did not inconvenience him one whit because he had eyes like a cat.

  On this particular night he was roaming the wild, wooded country where he dwelt undisturbed, and was thus the only person on earth in a position to hear the sounds resulting from the crash of an automobile on the road below.

  He hurried down to investigate and soon came upon the scene of the accident. Demented, as he was, it seemed insane to Limpus that anyone would travel that road at a speed beyond fifteen miles an hour.

  But someone had done just that, because the front end of the car looked as though it had been put through a stampmill. This did not interest Limpus too greatly, however. He was more engrossed with other possibilities and dug eagerly into the dark tonneau of the car.

  There was a body slumped over on the front seat. Limpus grinned like a vampire and went about the business of getting it out.

  Nor was he at all surprised over the affair. After all, he’d dutifully stuck to the script by coming up into these wild hills. It followed as night the day that fate would hand him a body to work on. That’s how it was done in Hollywood, and Limpus knew those boys out there were realists.

  Wasn’t all the world, in truth, a stage? Weren’t the people merely players?

  Wasn’t he entitled to a body?

  He hauled the corpse from the car and got it over his shoulder. He staggered happily into the woods toward home.

  DORN WALKED along a crowded street at high noon in a city of two million souls. He knew the street and the city, and what time it was, but he knew little else. He did know, but vaguely, that something was wrong, something he felt to be vital. But he had not the mental energy to delve into it. He was saturated, somehow, with a gentle, melancholy—a retrospective sadness entirely new to him.

  Also, he was mildly annoyed by the rudeness of the public. Never before had he had to get out of so many people’s way. It was shocking, the manner in which they barged blindly ahead as though each of them individually owned the sidewalk and he himself was of some unwashed clan who should walk in the gutter.

  Yet he could only be hurt by this treatment, not angered. His mental lethargy, it seemed, blanketed all but the mildest of emotions.

  But only up to a certain point. Squarely in the middle of the next block, he was jarred back into some semblance of normalcy. This by one of those things that just couldn’t happen. An occurrence, calculated to peel the hide off a steel elephant.

  The scene was a shop window in which stood several mannequins, clad in various stages of feminine undress. The most scantily clad dummy wore stockings, a bra, a garter belt, and a pair of transparent lace panties with a black patch in an obvious place. The whole, aspect, to Dorn, was one of positive indecency. A second mannequin was clad in a pink slip and the pattern went up the line to the last one, draped in a smart sport suit consisting of coat and skirt.

  The window was no doubt meant to contain a complete display of feminine apparel from the skin out, and
it certainly did just that. But Dorn would not have given it a second glance except for the girl who stood there in plain sight taking off her dress.

  Dorn caught sight of her just as she’d reached down, caught the edge of her skirt, and had started pulling the dress off over her head. His jaw dropped to his necktie. His eyes bulged, and he had just time to duck in next to a protecting stone pillar beside the window in order to keep from being knocked down by passing traffic.

  The girl was a honey-blonde and certainly did not look to be the promiscuous type. She looked exactly like the dozens of decent, attractive, desirable girls who meet boys, get married, and raise families.

  Yet she now stood nonchalantly in a store window on a public street at high noon taking off her dress. Underneath was revealed a pair of pink panties—not transparent—a pink bra, and nylons over a pair of legs that could get her married in nothing flat to any unattached male within marriageable distance.

  A publicity, stunt, Dorn thought. After all, the girl still had on more covering than the mannequin most representative of Eve. Gad! What they wouldn’t do to sell merchandise!

  He noted, in passing, that the crowd hadn’t spotted the girl yet. People continued to hurry by without the least idea of what they were missing.

  BUT HE noted this only in passing.

  All his attention was riveted upon the girl in the window. She stood for a moment thoughtfully surveying the various garments on display. She seemed to be endeavoring to make up her mind.

  Decision having been arrived at, she forced Dorn’s jaw even lower upon his chest by calmly stripping off her bra and panties.

  “Don’t look,” Dorn’s conscience said.

  “What do you mean—don’t look?” replied the beast in him.

  “This is wrong—sinful,” Conscience stated.

  “So are wars, pestilence and famine,” Beast answered. “Stop bothering me.”

  The girl moved, slim and beautiful as a summer dream, to the mannequin wearing the scandalous scanties. These she stripped off and appropriated after the natural manner. Next, she critically examined the material in the pink slip; she appropriated that garment also.

  Now Dorn’s attention was drawn forcibly from the casual pillage going on in the window; drawn by something even more amazing.

  No one on the street was paying any attention to the girl.

  From two directions, unnumbered human beings streamed by along the broad sidewalk. But they appeared completely blind so far as the sensational activity in the window was concerned.

  I’ve; lost my mind, Dorn thought. That’s the only answer…I’ve stepped beyond the boundaries of reason; barged right into the pages of Alice In Wonderland.

  But that, he remembered, was a children’s story. Possibly this was an advanced Alice—an Alice for adults. He realized then, quite suddenly, that the girl was watching him.

  She had just stripped the sport suit from the completely dressed mannequin—had been holding the skirt up for inspection. But her eyes turned his way—he saw they were clear blue—and they widened in apparent recognition. This brought added surprise. He had never before seen the girl. Not that he wouldn’t have welcomed an introduction, but the fact remained he didn’t know her. This did not keep her from speaking to him.

  “Oh, you startled me! I didn’t see you there.” A quick smile. “You should blow a horn or something.”

  Dorn was in such a state as to completely overlook the strangeness of his being able to hear her quite clearly through the heavy plate glass. There was no thought behind his reply.

  “I was walking along. I saw you. I was naturally interested. It…well…it isn’t very often a, person sees a girl…another person strip, changing…” He fell silent.

  With a quick, warm smile, the girl, stepped into the skirt, adjusted it, and took the jacket off the dummy. A moment later, completely dressed, she moved toward Dorn.

  SHE WALKED straight through the glass window out into the street. She came close to Dorn, smiled-up at him and placed her hands upon his shoulders. There was something motherly in her gaze.

  This madness—this nightmare—was too much for Dojn. He passed lax fingers through his rumpled hair and stared blankly into the girl’s face.

  Her pity was obvious now, and her manner, under other circumstances, might have been described as deliciously intimate. She stood close to him and straightened his necktie with frank tenderness. She said, “You poor, poor darling!”

  A wave of weakness passed through Dorn, weakness settling mainly in the region of his knees. He sought words, could find none, and returned the girl’s smile.

  “You just don’t understand, do you?” she crooned.

  Dorn shook his-head. “That’s certainly right out of the testament. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “You just—arrived?” The question was asked with delicacy.

  “I—I don’t know. I “guess maybe.”

  “Never mind. You come with me. We’ll find a cafeteria and get you a cup of hot coffee.”

  “A cafeteria?”

  There was a lull in passing traffic and the girl took his arm to lead him around the nearest corner and down a flights of steps. “Yes,” she said. “We have cafeterias. That is—it’s better because no one will serve us in regular restaurants.”

  That seemed as logical to Dorn as everything else, mainly because it continued the thread of complete idiocy.

  “Why won’t they serve us? Are we lepers or something?”

  “Of course not. You’ll understand in time. I remember when I first came. A fat man walked into me. I almost fainted when I went right through him.”

  “Went right through—”

  “Here’s a table. You sit down. I’ll fill a tray, and come right back.”

  Dorn dropped into a chair and watched the girl trip lightly to the gate giving entrance into the aisle along the food counters. So sated was he with the incongruous and impossible, that only a slight shock ran through him as he saw her walk straight through a woman dallying by the salad counter and stand completely submerged in the body of a tall, heavy-set man while she put two cups of coffee on the tray.

  DORN BLINKED to clear his eyes of the faint mist surrounding her as she stepped again into unoccupied space. The mist—the vague, glowing halo—refused to vanish. Again he blinked. No result.

  He turned his eyes upon the man putting a plate of roast beef on his tray. No halo there. A clear, perfectly defined outline.

  Obviously the halo was attached to Dorn’s new-found friend and the truth—the horrible truth—began to dawn on him. But he refused to recognize it as such. He pressed a hand hard over his eyes and told himself: I’m dreaming. It’s a wild hideous nightmare I’m in; a bad dream caused by raiding the ice box before bed-time.

  But this gave him scant comfort-because never in his life had he raided the ice box at bed-time.

  The girl had returned now and was placing the tray, loaded to overflowing, on the table. She smiled warmly at Dorn.

  “I don’t think you told me your name,” Dorn said.

  “Sally. Sally Williams. And yours?”

  “Dorn Lattimore, but—”

  Sally was putting things on the table. She said, “I’ve eaten here before. The food is very good. Dig right in and enjoy it.”

  “I’m not very hungry, really.”

  “Then drink the coffee. It will give you strength.”

  Dorn felt he must have presented a rather pathetic spectacle as he stirred the coffee. To offset this, he tried to smile, but it didn’t quite come off.

  Sally, seated opposite him, reached across the table to squeeze his hand reassuringly. “Perhaps you’d like to ask me some questions. I’ll try to help you over the rough spots.”

  “You’re very good, very kind. Tell me—are we invisible? Can’t anyone see us sitting here?”

  “We’re invisible to all but our own kind.”

  “Our own kind?”

  “Those on the same plane wit
h us.”

  “All right—let me have it straight. Are we dead?”

  “No, we aren’t, dead. We’ve only passed beyond the veil.”

  “Well, isn’t-that—”

  “Death? No.” Sally shook her head and Dorn watched the lights dance off her honey-blonde curls. “It’s merely what those down there think death to be.” She indicated the other diners and pushed a fork into her cottage cheese salad.

  “What do you mean ‘down there’? They aren’t lying on the floor.”

  Sally flashed white teeth and answered with a small mouthful of salad. “You’ll get used to the terms after a while. We always refer to them as being ‘down’ because they are on a lower plane than we are. They are composed of lower rates of vibration. That’s why we can see them while they can’t see us—or touch us. That’s why we can walk right through them.”

  DORN HAD so many unanswered questions flailing around in his mind he scarcely knew which one to ask first. While he was fishing for one, Sally laid down her fork and focused her eyes intently into his.

  “I want you to think very carefully,” she said. “Take your time and try to remember. Look into your immediate past. Where did you come from? What happened?”

  ‘‘It’s—it’s all so vague. As though I’min the middle of a dream.”

  “It will be for a while, but that will pass. Now think! What happened to you? Make an effort.”

  Born clasped a hand over his forehead and closed his eyes. “I remember it was night. Late. There were a pair of headlights.”

  “An auto? You were in a car and there was an accident? Were you driving?”

  “Yes—yes. I was alone. This damn fool in the other car was doing seventy.”

  Sally frowned and tapped a red nail against white teeth. “That’s strange. Are you sure there was another car?”

  “Of course I’m sure. It’s coming back now.”

  “The other driver must have survived, then.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if he too had passed beyond the veil, you’d be with him. Those who’ve just come always cling together for a while. Sometimes you’ll be walking along and meet forty or fifty released souls in a group. Then you can be sure there’s been a train wreck or a disaster. They say in China after the floods and famines, whole armies of people move about together.”