The Man Who Stopped at Nothing (1951) Read online

  The two women approached with well-filled trays and set them on the table. Dorn, with a feeling of definite resentment, felt his chair slide on the marble floor. A hell of a plane where you had to occupy space with a fat woman at breakfast. The woman lowered her weight into the chair.

  But she got so far down and no further. Dorn felt the bulk of her hundred and fifty pounds settle-into his lap. He grunted indignantly and the woman came up out of the chair as though propelled by a hatpin.

  She whirled in her tracks—surprisingly quick-for one of her size. A look of blank consternation came into her face as she stared down at Dorn. Her words were a disjointed babble.

  “I’m—Oh,. I’m so sorry! I didn’t know—I mean, I didn’t see anyone. I—”

  Then her eyes widened and her face lost_all its color. With a wild swing of her head, she turned to her astonished companion.

  “A man!” she bleated.. “There was a man in that chair. I didn’t see him and I sat on him. Then I saw him and now I don’t see him any more!” The woman fainted and went to the floor.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Sally ordered. “We need a breathing spell. There’s a lot going, on I don’t understand.” ‘

  They, pulled up, finally, in a secluded corner of a hotel lobby where they found two chairs. They sat down weariiy.

  “I don’t care what you say about people occupying the same chair,” Dorn said. “If someone comes over here to sit down I’m getting up. That dame almost squashed me.”

  SALLY WAS regarding him with a strange expression. It was as though she expected him to be transformed into something else at any moment. “We’ve got to have a serious talk,” she said. “Something is vitally wrong here.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Your reactions are all messed up, for one thing. You want to look at my legs. You don’t want to go to your own funeral. You miss your wife. You’re all twisted up, Mr. Lattimore.”

  “I’m sorry. Are there any psychiatrists on this plane?”

  Sally ignored that. “And you keep reappearing in the lower plane. Something that’s impossible.”

  “It isn’t impossible. I did it twice.”

  “When you told me about getting stuck in the wall last night, I put it down to nerves. But I must have-been wrong.”

  “You’ve no idea how wrong! I’ll never forget that girl’s scream.”

  “And that woman saw you in the cafeteria. Your aura vanished. You actually materialized on the lower plane.”

  “Then quit saying it’s impossible.”

  There was a time of silence while Sally sat deep in thought and Dorn bit his fingernails. Sally’s eyes remained glued to his face as though she strove to pierce his hide and discover what was wrong with him. Finally she came to a decision.

  “I think we’d better go to your funeral,” she said. “You’ve got to be forced into doing normal things or the morbid streak in you will grow stronger.”

  “But I don’t want to go to my funeral.”

  “Did you feel the sameway about your wedding?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s practically the same thing.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t see the similarity.”

  “But you’re on a higher plane now.”

  Dorn groaned. “Okay. If you put it that way, we’ll go to my funeral.”

  “You’ll see Vicky, your wife,” Sally said. “Does that interest you?”

  “It certainly does.”

  Sally shook her head in bewilderment. “It shouldn’t.”

  She got up from her chair, pulled Dorn erect and started for the street. “Where did you live?”

  “In Stonegate, a suburb about forty miles north.”

  “It’s ten o’clock. This should be the day and the services should be starting soon. Did you belong to a church or will they bury you from a funeral parlor?”

  “I was a church-going, God-fearing man.”

  “What church?”

  “We’ll catch a train and I’ll show you.”

  “That isn’t necessary. We can travel much faster by ourselves. We aren’t held back by either gravity or friction of any kind.”

  “That’s easy to say, but let’s, see you do it.”

  “You’re awfully short-tempered. You must have been hard to live with. Maybe your wife won’t even go to your funeral.”

  “Don’t be absurd. How do we go to Stonegate without taking the train?”

  “The main thing is picking an objective and holding it in your mind. I’ll try to show you how it’s done. Close your eyes and take my hand.”

  Dorn did as he was instructed.

  “Now, visualize the church. Keep a picture of it in your mind. Visualize hard.”

  DORN PICTURED the ivy-covered walls of the trim, steepled church where he and Vicky and the children had gone every Sunday morning. Well, perhaps not every one. Suddenly all was quiet except for the wind whistling past his ears.

  “Don’t open your eyes,” Sally said, “or you might get dizzy and turn end over end.”

  “Where did you learn all these things? The hard way?”

  “A boy teirght me. He’d been through the veil about six months when I met hfm.”

  “Interesting. And how did you manage with your baser instincts—the ones that die gradually?” ‘

  There was a surprisingly dreamy note in Sally’s reply. “It seems to me I had a rather difficult time with them. But that was long ago. I hardly remember.”

  Dorn felt a slight bump.

  “You can open your eyes now. We’re here.”

  Dorn blinked., Sally said, “It’s a nice church. A very nice one. But there don’t seem to be any funerals in progress.”

  Dorn looked swiftly about him. He’d o made no mistake. This was the church where he’d spent many uncomfortable but uplifting hours. Nothing was going on, however. The doors were closed. Not a person was in sight. If services were being held, they were for someone in a higher vibration than the one he and Sally occupied.

  “I can’t understand it. Aren’t they going to bury me? You don’t suppose they plan to leave me lying around?”

  “We probably missed the day. We’ll find you laid out in a funeral parlor somewhere. Any idea where it would be?”

  “Stanger’s, probably. He belongs to the country club and he’d no doubt be nosing around after the business.”

  “All right, visualize.”

  Dorn closed his eyes and dreamed up the transformed mansion which housed the Stanger Funeral Home. He opened his eyes and they were standing before it.

  “One thing for this plane,” he said, “You certainly can’t beat the transportation.”

  Business was very slow at Stanger’s. Dorn and Sally entered to find not one corpse laid out in any of the several rooms. They investigated, further and discovered even the ice box was empty. People weren’t passing the veil in any large numbers, it seemed. Or, if they were, they were not being buried from Stanger’s.

  “I don’t get it,” Dorn said flatly. “There’s only one place to go. Your home. You had a home, I presume?”

  “A very nice one. Thirty thousand dollars with only a ten thousand dollar mortgage.”

  “It must have been nice. ”

  “I imagine it’s still nice. I have no reason to think it burned down since I was there last.”

  “We’re wasting time.”

  DQRN WAS getting the technique now. With very little help from Sally, he was soon leading her up the walk between the neatly trimmed lawns toward the deep, cool porch.

  “You must have left her rather badly off,” Sally said. “She can’t even afford a wreath.”

  “Possibly delivery was slow,” Dorn said with dignity.

  They went in through the front door, which was closed, and Laura, Dorn’s eldest, daughter, ran right through her father in a mad dash toward the stairs. She was carrying a bright red scarf.

  A shrill voice called, “You give me that! It’s mine! It’s m
ine and I didn’t say you could wear it!”

  Patricia, two years younger than her sister, went by without realizing she could have reached out and laid a hand on—or rather into—her sire.

  “Nice goings-on in a house of sorrow,” Sally commented.

  Another voice from just through the archway, leading to the living room. “You girls stop rough-housing. I’ll tell your father when he comes home.”

  Dorn’s relief was apparent in the smile he turned on Sally. “There’s your answer,” he said with ascertain smug triumph. “They don’t know I’m dead yet. After all, I was killed on a lonely country road—”

  “I wish you’d stop using the terms killed and dead. It’s positively ghoulish.”

  “I was on my way to our cabin up north for a week of hunting—for a bit of rest. Heaven knows where that road is. It was pitch dark. The cars were probably knocked off into the undergrowth.”

  “You’re sure another car hit you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then your theory, doesn’t hold water.”

  “Why not?”

  “If there was another car the driver survived the crash. Otherwise he’d have been with you. If he had walked away from the wreck he certainly wouldn’t have left your body lying around.”

  “Maybe he hid it. He might have been an ynscrupulous character who didn’t want to stand trial for manslaughter. He probably buried me up there and slunk away like the cur he is.”

  “Be that as it may,”. Sally said. “I’d like to meet your widow.”

  They found Vicky lying on the lounge in a house coat. A cup of coffee sat on The table at her elbow. She was reading a lurid-covered twenty-five-cent paper-back entitled Halo in Brass. Sally inspected her critically.

  “Does she have nice legs?”

  Dorn’s eyes grew dreamy. “Terrific. I saw her for the first time in a bathing suit. That was in Florida. I was—” He bridled swiftly. “It’s none of your business.”

  SALLY’S FACE was dead serious as she stepped close to Dorn and laid a hand on his arm. “Dorn, I’m worried about you. Really, I am. You shouldn’t react that way at all. It’s as I said before, entirely abnormal. You shouldn’t have any fond memories relative to this woman. That’s all over and done with. You’ve passed beyond the veil and yet you persist in thoughts and reactions of the lower vibration.”

  “You mean I should forget my wife and children entirely?”

  “Npt forget them, but your feeling should-be entirely impersonal, like—well, like ships you passed in the night.”

  “There’s something indecent about that.”

  “There shouldn’t be.”

  Dorn’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You know, in a way, what you say is true. My feelings toward Vicky. They are rather impersonal. We had a nice life together but I don’t feel sad at leaving her—or the children.”

  Sally smiled. “That’s excellent.”

  “But I didn’t feel bad about that angle of it even before that bar hit me. I had a moment to think and I cheerfully conceded the fact that another man would get hooked with—I mean, would recognize her sterling worth and marry her. I wasn’t the least bit jealous.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand what you mean. But that doesn’t solve anything. Dorn, we’ve got to follow this thing through. We’ve got to find your body. Haven’t you the least idea where you were when you passed over?”

  “Not the faintest.”

  At that moment, deep in his mountain retreat, Jan Limpus touched a wire to a certain part of his cadaver. The body jerked as in a spasm.

  Vicky looked up languidly, from her book, did a double take and cried, “Dorn! What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

  Jan drew back his wire. Vicky’s mouth opened. Her book fell to the floor. She fainted.

  Brief seconds later, at a spot five miles from the Lattimore residence, Sally said, “You did it again.”

  “Evidently I did. And you’ll notice I’ve gotten onto this trick of going places in a hurry. We’re way out past the country club.”

  Sally looked a trifle wan. The fast pace was beginning to tell. She found a grassy knoll nearby and dropped to the ground where she sat with her legs curled under her.

  Dorn came over and sat down beside her.His look was openly tender. “I’ve gotten to be quite a problem to you, haven’t I?”

  She smiled. “I don’t mind. It’s just the confusion. It’s the bewildering turns things keep taking. All these utterly insane happenings.”

  DORN REACHED out suddenly and took her hand. “Sally. Isn’t there anything on this plane remotely resembling love or affection? Don’t they have even a reasonable facsimile thereof?”

  “Of course there is.”

  “But not between man and girl.”

  “Yes, between man and girl.”

  Dorn felt a sudden elation. “Then you’ve been fibbing to me. I know. You were being coy.”

  “I was not. What I told you referred to—well, sexual love. There is a love here between a man and a woman, but it’s on a spiritual plane. It’s a love of one mind for another. Soul cleaves to soul.”

  “How about lip cleaving to lip?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does to me. Are you in love with anyone, by the way? On a high plane, I mean?”

  Sally lowered her eyes. “I think I am.”

  “The lad who taught you all the tricks?”

  “No.”

  Dorn felt suddenly stifled. He had the mad urge to make something pop. “Sally, damn it all! I’m in love with you and it’s a pretty blamed carnal type of love. It’s the kind that takes legs and—and other things into consideration. The kind that has to have more satisfaction than a flight in the realm of spuls.”

  She put a finger to his Jips, seeking to stop him, but he plunged on. “I know I’m the rankest kind of a cad but I don’t care. I had a wife and here I’ve practically forgotten about her before my body is cold, but I don’t give a damn. I know I’m a heel, but what the hell?”

  “You aren’t a cad nor a heel. You’re just a maladjusted individual.”

  “Whatever I am, I love you, I want to kiss you. I want to take you in my arms. I want to look at your legs with a feeling that they belong to me.”

  Sally stared at him for a long solemn moment. She seemed to consider him a weighty problem, but not a distasteful one. “I feel I should help you,” she said. “Possibly by indulging in these abnormalities of yours, you’ll see how meaningless they are. Maybe that’s the answer. You may kiss me—and do whatever else you think necessary to fill your strange need. I’ll cooperate as best I can.”

  “Baby!” Dorn brought her to her feet and took her slim body into his arms. His lips sought and found hers. He put a great deal into the partnership-and Sally’s feet left the ground.

  A minute passed. Another. Then Dorn gently released Sally. There was a look of sadness in his eyes. “Is that the best you can do in the way of cooperation?”

  Obviously he had hurt her deeply. Her full, rich lips trembled. “I did my best, really I did.”

  “Can’t you remember how you cooperated back in the lower vibrations? You must have cooperated with someone unless your mother kept you locked up.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  Dorn scratched his head. “It’s a little like making love to a bag of feathers. I mean—oh, I don’t know what I mean! Let’s try it again.”

  “All right.”

  “Fine. Loosen up and see if you can get into the swing of it. It’s very simple, really.”

  Again he took Sally in his arms. A look of fear dawned in her face.

  THERE WAS no transition in memory or anything else; no frantic retchings nor wild agonies in uncharted space. There was only a faceful of whiskers scratching Dorn’s clean-shaven jowls. A lot of sharp bones prodding into him.

  A voice—scratchy, irritating—saying: “Cut it out! Leggo o’ me. What are you trying to do?”


  Dorn opened his eyes to stare into a face out of someone’s choice nightmare. It was the face of the creature he was holding in his arms. He had, it seemed, been kissing the creature.

  He said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Jan Limpus. I am a scientist. You owe me a great debt of gratitude, young man. I just brought you back to life!”

  “What are you talking about? I was never dead.”

  Limpus evidently didn’t hear the words of his cadaver. The madman’s eyes were blazing. He flung his arms toward the ceiling in the most approved Hollywood mad scientist manner and read his lines perfectly: “I’ve done it! I’ve put life back into a cold corpse!”

  Dorn was a trifle chilly when re minded of the fact. He looked down and found himself to be as naked as a lamp post. His clothing was piled on a nearby chair.

  “What’s been going on here?” he demanded with marked belligerence.

  Limpus ignored him and spoke to the ceiling: “I, Jan Limpus, will become immortal! The first man since Frankenstein to recreate a human being!”

  Limpus gave off declaiming to the ceiling and concentrated upon Dorn. He came close and poked a finger in the latter’s face.

  “But I’m far greater than Frankenstein! I didn’t have to use odd pieces. I took a complete body and rejuvenated it. Wait until I write my paper for the medical society. I’ll be famous!”

  Dorn, was putting on his clothes as fast as he could. As he pulled his pants on, his eyes traveled about the room. He shuddered. “Good Lord. This place looks like something out of a horror film.”

  “It is. I went to see the movie seventy-four times so I’d have every detail correct.”

  Dorn’s mind had been a trifle foggy, but it was clearing fast. He looked at the weird caricature of a doctor with a new alertness, as though ready to grab a chair and defend himself at the least provocation.

  JAN LIMPUS was oblivious of everything but his great triumph. He snatched a notebook from the table and stood with a poised pencil.

  “We must get the statistics, now—the details of interest. Tell me, what you remember. How far back does your memory go?”

  “Back to when I was about ten years old.”