The Man Who Stopped at Nothing (1951) Read online

  Dorn glanced around nervously. “You’re sure no one can see us? What about the food you bought? The tray? Can’t they see the dishes on the table?”

  “No. You see when I picked up the tray it still remained where it was so far as those down there are concerned. I lifted only a high rate of vibration from the metal. The vibration of course forms a complete tray, just as the salad and the coffee I took are complete in themselves, but lower rate those down there see and eat remains untouched.”

  “I suppose I should know what you’re talking, about, but I don’t.”

  “You’ll understand it eventually,” Sally said easily. “After all, you’re in pretty much the same position as a baby born down there. It doesn’t learn to walk overnight.”

  “I suppose not. But about this not being dead—this passing through the veil. I don’t get that at all. I always thought that when you got killed you were dead.”

  “Did you ever hear of limbo, purgatory?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, that mighty help to explain it—that is, as nearly as it can be explained.”

  “You mean the thousands-the millions—the billions of people who have died—”

  “Not died.”

  “Then who have passed beyond the veil come into this state of existence?”

  “Where else could they come?”

  “Then why isn’t this plane of yours—”

  She smiled. “Ours.”

  “—of ours, then, crowded to the cattle guards? I can’t see how there’d even be room to stand around.”

  “After a while,” Sally said gravely, “we die.”

  “We do? How soon?”

  THERE isn’t any fixed rule. In the lower plane, a baby can pass beyond the veil at birth. Or a man can live for a hundred years. Here the time seems to be much shorter. I’m four now and considered to be getting on in years.”

  “You-mean you. passed beyond the veil four years ago?”

  “That’s right.”

  “An accident?”

  “I was drowned, at Coney Island.”

  “I’m sorry-.”

  “That’s another thing you’ll have to get over. You wouldn’t have sympathized with a child for being born, would you?”

  “Not to change the subject, but suppose somebody comes over and sits down at this table. We’d have to get up in a hurry, wouldn’t we?”

  “No. Let them sit down. if they want to.”

  “But—but we’re using the chairs.”

  “Not the part they’d use. Don’t worry about it.”

  “One more thing—while you were in that window…”

  Sally ate her cottage cheese with relish. She laid down her fork and said, “I imagine you thought I was a thief.”

  “That isn’t what I was going to bring up. I’m wondering how you knew I had passed the veil. You look the same as everyone else to me.”

  “Almost, but not quite. The higher vibration gives off a certain radiance. It’s faint but discernible.”

  “I’ve noticed it. I wondered what it was. And may I say it’s very becoming on you?”

  Sally got up from the table. “Thank you. And now I think you should get some rest. You look tired.”

  “I am tired. Where can we go?”

  “To a hotel, of course.”

  “Together?”

  “Certainly. Does that surprise you?”

  “Well—”

  “It won’t after you’ve existed here for a while. You will develop an entire new code of morals and ethics.”

  “I’ll be very receptive.”

  Sally paused for a moment, then sat down. “Maybe I can help you a little in that respect. You see, the lower moral code does not exist in this plane. There is no need of it. We are not in a productive-vibration. The method of entrance is not through sexual reproduction, so the male and female mean nothing at all.”

  This Dorn doubted. “You’re not kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “O. K. But when I saw you in that window with nothing…without anything—well, when I saw you standing there my reactions were strictly from the lower vibrations.”

  “That was different. You’d just been born, so to speak. The instincts of your former life were still functioning. But you will lose them very quickly. They are fading out of you even now.”

  “You could be wrong about that.”

  “I don’t think I am.”

  “Then we go to a hotel together and get some sleep?”

  “I think it would be a good idea.”

  A SUDDEN thought came to Dorn.

  “And we can go anywhere we want to? We can pick a fifty-dolar-a day suite in the best hotel?”

  She shrugged! “If we choose. But surroundings will become less and less important to you as time goes on. A comfortable bed is the main thing.”

  “One bed?”

  “Two if you wish. I twist around a lot in my sleep.”

  “I—I think that would be best until my old instincts die. And may be you would humor me on another point. Let’s go to the Belford Plaza and move into the penthouse. I want to savor my taste for extravagance before it Jades out.”

  “Very well.”

  Sally got up and walked toward the exit. Dorn followed her. The door was closed. Sally turned and said, “You might as well, start learning things right now. This door, for instance. You can’t open it the way you used to open doors. The vibrations on the lower plane won’t respond in any way to your efforts,”

  “Then how do we get out of here?”

  “The lower vibration won’t hold you back. You just walk through it.”

  “You mean, just—”

  .“That’s it. Walk into the thing as though it didn’t exist. So far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t. Try it.”

  “All right. Here goes.”

  Dorn stepped resolutely toward the wood and glass barrier. When it was an inch from his nose, he closed his eyes and flinched. But there was nothings—nothing at all. He opened his eyes and Sally was saying, “Good, excellent. See how easy it is?”

  Dorn took a deep breath of higher-plane air. “I feel wonderful. Why, it’s as though I’d just begun to live!”

  “I felt the same way,” Sally replied. “Now, walk directly up the street and don’t step aside for anyone.”

  The effect of walking through people was exhilarating to say the least, and Dorn felt a sudden pity for all the people down there who went about in a cloud so to speak, not having the least idea of what was really going on in the world.

  Engrossed as he was in all this newness, like a child with a new toy, a sudden thought struck him. “Look here, we_can walk through doors and through people. Yet the sidewalk holds us up. How come we don’t sink right through it?”

  “You’ll be able to with some practice,” Sally replied with what he thought was almost a tender look. “But as they tell children down there, learn to walk before you start running.”

  DORN LOOKED closely, at his beautiful new friend and he wondered the while if her old instincts were-entirely dead.

  They found two unoccupied apartments in the Belford Plaza penthouse and chose the more elaborate suite. Sally, interested in only the important things, was entirely unimpressed by the lavish surroundings as she tested the springs of one of the twin beds. “This will do nicely,” she said.

  She bent forward in an unmistakable movement Dorn had seen before—toward the hem of her skirt.

  Dorn said, “Wait.” There was a pleading note in his voice.

  Sally straightened, a questioning look on her face.

  “Wait until I get out—go through the wall—please.”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “Into The other bedroom. I’ll sleep there. I’m not as confident as you are about these dying instincts. A man can stand just so much.

  She smiled at him with that strange tenderness. “Sleep in there if you wish, but it’s not necessary. Remember, you aren’t a man any more
in that sense. You’ve risen above lower things.”

  “Don’t put any money on it. I’ve got a hunch my instincts die hard.” Halfway through the wall he turned and asked, “Do you wear a nightgown or sleep raw?”

  “I never wear a nightgown.”

  “Then at least keep a sheet over you in case I want to come in and ask some more questions.”

  “Very well. I’ll humor you.”

  “Another thing, would you object to an experiment?”

  “Certainly not. What do you have in mind?”.

  Dorn walked back to the bed. Very gently, but firmly, he took Sally into his arms. He raised her chin and planted his lips very firmly upon hers. They were warm and very nice. After a long moment he drew back.

  Sally’s eyes were bright with interest. “What did that prove?”

  Dorn sighed. “It’s no use explaining. Here beyond the veil I probably couldn’t make you understand.” He went through the wall into the next room.

  AT EXACTLY four minutes after nine o’clocic that night, two apparently unrelated incidents sent three people, in two planes of existence, off on three courses of action.

  Deep in the northern woods, the mad Jan Limpus crouched over a body in his laboratory. The body, pallid but undamaged, lay on a table surrounded by as weird, a collection of gadgets as ever graced the set of a Hollywood horror movie.

  Dynamos hummed. Arcs of blue flame leaped across gaps from one electrode to another. Strange solutions boiled endlessly in cry stal goblets and, to make the scene perfect, a howling rain storm lashed through the trees outside.

  In this setting, Jan Limpus pushed a button on an electric instrument and the body on the table jerked suddenly and trembled.

  At that exact instant, Dorn Lattimore, having grown restless on r his soft bed in the Bedford Plaza penthouse, and having arisen to practice his new art of walking through solid objects, was halfway, through the foot-thick wall enclosing his bedroom.

  Halfway through—and he found, to his horror, that he could go no further.

  He found, also, other interesting things. He had pushed, head and shoulders, into a magnificent mauve-tiled bathroom, a bathroom which was being used by a girl who had evidently felt the need of a shower. The young lady was wearing what most people wear in a shower—nothing.

  Soaping herself luxuriously, she had turned and beheld half a man sticking in through the. wall; a man who was struggling to get further in and was having no success.

  The girl dropped her soap and froze motionless under the steaming spray. Her mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, for all the world like a fish flung upon the shore.

  By dint of titanic effort, she made connections with her reflexes.

  There resulted a scream calculated to awaken people for blocks around.

  At that moment, a few seconds later than four minutes after nine, the body on Jan Limpus’ table stopped trembling and stiffened again into immobility. Also, the bathroom door in the Belford penthouse was flung open by a man in crimson pajamas, where upon the girl fell out of the shower into his arms.

  The man asked, “What in the hell is going on in here?”

  The girl had all the appearances of a goggle-eyed idiot with no clothes on.

  She pointed at the wall and screamed again.

  Her rescuer demanded, “What’s wrong with you? Baby, what’s the matter?”

  “A ma-ma-ma-ma-man!”

  “What do you mean—a man? There’s nobody in here.”

  The girl pointed. “Stick-sticking out through the wall. Half of him!”

  “Baby! Snap out of it!”

  “A man. I saw him! Trying to come through the wall.”

  The girl’s husband was thoroughly frightened.

  He’d heard of people going stark raving crazy at the drop of a hat, but he’d never seen it before. He propped his wife, against the wash-bowl and went over and rubbed his hand over the smooth shining wall.

  “It’s all right, All right! baby. There’s nothing there. Only the wall. Come on. I’ll get you to bed and call a doctor.”

  The affair cost him four thousand dollars for a top-notch psychiatrist who could find nothing wrong with the girl, but who mailed a bill anyhow.

  ALSO, THE affair sent the highly elated Jan Limpus off on an entirely new line of frenzied research.

  And it sent Dorn Lattimore in panic to the bedside of Sally Williams.

  Sally opened her eyes and sat up. The sheet dropped to her midriff and Dorn’s stubborn instincts caused him to jerk it back up and wind it firmly, about her shapely shoulders.

  “I—I got stuck.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was practicing this going-through-things business. I got stuck in a wall.”

  Sally smiled. “You’re exactly like a baby down there. After. taking its first step there’s no stopping it. But about being stuck in a wall—you’re joking of course.”

  “I’m not joking. Halfway through I couldn’t come back or go ahead. It was like being locked in a vise. There was a girl in the room and she saw me. She let out a yell, like a banshee with an ear ache. That brought her husband, but by that time I’d gotten loose and faded out so he couldn’t see me.”

  Sally regarded him in silence for a few moments. A frown creased her smooth forehead. “You’re sure this really happened—that you didn’t imagine it?

  “I tell you, that’s how it was.”

  “Impossible.”

  “What do you mean, impossible?”

  “It just couldn’t happen. It’s like someone down there claiming he could hang in mid-air with no support. Just impossible.”

  “Are there such things as hallucinations on this higher plane?”

  “I never heard of any. But you’d better sleep in here.” Sally pointed to the unoccupied bed. “Lie down there so I can keep an eye on you.”

  Dorn was too disturbed to protest. He dropped down and stretched out wearily on the bed.

  “That’s fine,” Sally observed, in a soothing voice. “Close your eyes now and go to sleep.”

  Dorn closed his eyes, but he didn’t go to sleep. He watched the even rise and fall of Sally’s high breasts—took in the curves of her body from her toes to the saucy tilt of her nose.

  There was something mighty disturbing in all this. Take the matter of his instincts; the ones that were supposed to die. If they’d perished, new and stronger ones seemed to have arisen to take their places.

  He thought of Vicky; of Pat and Laura. A sudden sense of loneliness swept over him. A feeling of helpless emptiness; of pure fright.

  There was something mighty cockeyed about this deal. Mighty-cockeyed.

  Dorn turned over and resolutely demanded sleep.

  HE AWOKE next morning with no sense of having been born again, but rather in a mood akin to a rainy, dismal day even though the sun was shining outside. His first thought was t of Vicky. Then his mind Switched quickly to Sally and he glanced over to see an empty bed next to his.

  Now the sound of a shower came to him and Sally called from the bathroom: “Are you awake?”

  Dorn informed her that he was.

  “Then come on in. The water’s just right.”

  “I’d better wait until you’re through.”

  “Why?”

  “It might be kind of crowded, for one thing.”

  “All right. I’ll be through in a few minutes.”

  A short time later they rode down from the penthouse with an elevator boy who thought he was entirely alone.

  They had breakfast in the cafeteria.

  Over coffee, .Sally grew pensive. “Do you know what I woke up thinking about?”

  “No.”

  “My funeral.”

  “Your funeral. I was Reeling pretty low myself, but—”

  “Oh, I wasn’t depressed. I was very happy. It was a beautiful ceremony. My family crying. All the flowers. There were forty-two cars in the procession. I counted them. I was very
popular. Then, going at the height of my girlhood so to speak—”

  “Stop it! I’m in no mood for sadism. I suppose watching your mother’s grief made you very happy.”

  “Why not? It proved, she loved me.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve got a lot to learn about life On this plane.”

  “It will take-a little time. By the way, you’ll probably be buried this afternoon. You’ll want to attend, of course.”

  “Go to my own funeral? Good God!”

  “But everyone does.”

  “Everyone but Dorn Laitimore. I’ve no desire to see Vicky and the children weeping.”

  “Vicky was, your wife?”

  “Yes, and I’m beginning to miss her like the very devil.”

  Sally leaned forward and looked with genuine concern into Dorn’s face. “I’m worried about you. I can’t understand it. You shouldn’t have any feeling whatever for your wife. And you should look forward to attending your own funeral. Your reactions are—are completely abnormal.”

  “On the contrary. I seem to be the only normal individual on this whole abnormal plane. You said my instincts would die out. Well, they haven’t. This morning I had a very healthy and wholesome urge to go into the bathroom and get a long,,undisturbed look at your legs. The only, reason I didn’t was that I’m a gentleman. And I don’t want to go to my own funeral.”

  SALLY’S CONCERN deepened. “You wanted to look at my legs?”

  “Yes. And. I don’t see anything abnormal about it. And if you want to know what I was thinking, this is it: I was cursing my luck. I lived for thirty-five years among people who appreciated the importance of sex; who were alive to its possibilities. And the only time I get into a hotel room with a beautiful girl is after I’m dead. It’s like inheriting a pair of binoculars after you’ve gone blind.”

  “Dead? But you’re not dead.”

  “All right—after I’ve passed through the veil. Quit being so technical.” Dorn glanced toward the food counter. He said. “Those two women. They’re coming this way. I think they’re going to sit down af this table.”

  “That’s nothing to worry about. Let them’sit down. You might as well get used to people occupying the lower vibrations of your chair.”