The Genial Dinosaur. John Russell Fearn

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      Daylight came early. Summer mists dispersed and warm sun poured forth. Courage rose. Planes by the hundred scoured and photographed the British Isles from end to end, but no signs of a monster or monsters were reported. The only assumption was that the mining engineers up in Scotland had tippled too much whisky and seen a pink elephant in a new guise.

      And the blackout of Scottish cities? The broken pylons and telephone wires? The smashed miners’ dwellings and the score or so crushed bodies? Scotch whisky could not account for this.… All very mysterious and perplex­ing. Better go on searching, then. In fact, a good time was had by all, and especially by the mighty brute about whom all the bother had arisen. It could not be located for the simple reason that it had blundered into an old mine shaft and there fallen asleep, partly underground.

      But when night came it was on its way again. Farms were denuded of cattle and livestock to satisfy the brute’s vast appetite. Entire ponds dried up to slake his thirst. And he went on remorselessly, yet with animal cunning enough to know that daylight might spell his doom. At the first sign of dawn he disappeared to the lowest level of land and there slept, secure in the knowledge that the fools of human beings would never distinguish his brown-grey colour against the similar hue of the countryside.…

      So, gradually, as day succeeded day, the exciting news of a wandering monster died down. It was believed to be all talk, probably to take the public mind off the ever-present though indefinite possibility of invasion from Mars. Just the same, certain people in certain places—namely, Westmorland, York, Derby, Leicester, and Oxford—did swear they had seen by night a mighty bulk against the starry sky. Southward, ever southward: this seemed to be the dinosaur’s course.

      The two people in all Britain most interested in the reports of the dinosaur were Cliff Brooks and Joan. They gathered all the news they could, but most of it was fragmentary. So Cliff made a special trip to Scotland and there talked with the miners who had first sent forth the warning. The fact they had also seen colossal footprints in the softer parts of the region—and the broken pylons and flooded McDermott Project—convinced him that something had indeed made its appearance from below.

      “Did you by any chance get a clear view of this monster?” Cliff asked Nick anxiously, when general questioning and investigation had finished.

      “Yes, Mr. Brooks.” Nick gave a grim nod. “High as a three-storey building and heavy enough to make the ground shake. It’s had me wondering since if maybe the earth tremors around this region were not caused by that brute pulling down underground rockery. I just don’t understand it. I thought you and your wife, and those engineers who unfortunately lost their lives, sealed every­thing up to stop any more invasions from below.”

      “We did.” Cliff gave a serious smile. “We took care to block up all monsters and pterodactyls—save one. That one monster was a diplodocus, the most fearsome of all prehistoric monsters. A brute weighing eighty tons. That one we didn’t seal off—at least not intentionally.”

      “Oh?” Nick looked puzzled.

      “My wife and I had a sort of affection for that one,” Nick explained uncomfortably. “We reared him from an egg and he kind of took to us. We called him Herbert—just for fun. He pulled our borer free of disaster when all human agency had failed. Saved our lives, in fact. But on the way home—about eight hundred miles below surface—rockery fell between him and us, and we believed that was the end of him.”

      “Believed?”

      “That’s what I said. Now I’m wondering. Plainly, this brute you have seen is a diplodocus, and far as I know the only diplodocus likely to be able to escape must be Herbert! It’s all very harassing.”

      “Yes,” the foreman engineer agreed, staring. “Very. First I’ve heard of this—making friends with a dinosaur, I mean.”

      “Why not? People make friends of tigers and elephants, so why not dinosaurs? All in the upbringing—”

      To this Nick had no answer. He had heard from various sources that Cliff Brooks was overworking, and now he felt sure he had visible evidence of the fact. To talk in tones of the deepest sentiment concerning one of the most terrifying beasts ever known to exist just didn’t make sense. Cliff, for his part, gathered from the foreman’s expression what was being thought, so he did not delay any longer. He had learned all he needed, so the wisest course seemed to be to head homewards. Before he did so, however, he rang up Joan and gave her the news.

      “Ten to one it’s Herbert, Joan,” he finished urgently. “If that is so, I don’t know whether to be glad or sorry. If he’s Herbert, he’s liable to get us into a whale of a lot of danger; and if he isn’t, there’ll be danger anyway.”

      “We can discuss it when you get home,” Joan said, and her voice sounded rather formal—so much so indeed that Cliff raised his eyebrows.

      “Anything wrong back home, sweetheart? What did I do to merit the cold shoulder?”

      “Don’t be so silly, Cliff! It is difficult to say much, though. The vicar’s only in the next room!”

      “Oh, him again!” Cliff made a wry face as he realised that genial, high-living gentleman had probably called for another fat subscription. “Okay—I understand. See you later.”

      Cliff rang off and back home Joan put the receiver down and returned into the lounge. It was just after five o’clock, and the torrid summer sunlight was pouring in upon the rotund figure of the Reverend Grimsby Maxwell, vicar of the parish to which Cliff and Joan belonged. His visits were disturbingly frequent, and by no means concentrated upon dispensing the gospel, either. The reverend gentleman had his heart set on a new church, and the wealthy Clifford Brooks looked likely for becoming the financial pillar thereof. All very well in its way, but Joan did have the feeling that the reverend was somewhat exceeding the limit.

      “Not bad news, I trust?” The vicar beamed and balanced a cup of tea dextrously on a plump knee.

      “Pardon?” Joan looked at him vaguely and then started. “Oh, the phone, you mean? No, it wasn’t bad news—just my husband telling me about a relative of ours. Herbert, by name.”

      “Ah, I understand. I had rather hoped I would see your husband, as there is a little matter I would like to discuss with him.” The vicar raised the tea and sipped it. “It concerns the new church annexe. He—your husband, of course—is so brilliant an engineer it occurred to me he might be able to help me.”

      “My husband is concerned with mining, reverend—not engineering as such. Naturally, I’m sure he would be—”

      Joan stopped dead, her hazel eyes as wide as they could go as she stared beyond the vicar’s comfortably obese figure. He hesitated, drank a little more tea, and then began to look uneasy.

      “Is—is something the matter?” he asked hesitantly.

      “Don’t move,” Joan whispered, without moving her gaze from something beyond him. “Stay exactly as you are and the possibility is that you won’t get hurt.”

      “I—I beg your pardon?” It was the reverend’s turn to widen his eyes.

      Joan did not explain further. She sat as though transfixed, watching something just beyond the immediate grounds of the residence. Where the railings of the grounds terminated there lay open country, and in the midst СКАЧАТЬ