Read Online The Smog by John Creasey - Free Book Online

snugly. Other men with more conventional masks had emerged from the smog, but the most awful sight was the little spiral clouds of smog which rose everywhere until one joined with another to make a blanket of evil smelling fumes that crept slowly but remorselessly towards the Manor.
    Palfrey raised an arm, waving the car away. Costain put on speed, relieved at seeing the gravel ahead and the grass on either side free from the clouds of vapour.
    â€œI don’t know whether that man’s a fool or a genius,” Griselda remarked.
    â€œI don’t know whether to hate him or admire him,” said Marion. “Do you know him well, Mr. Costain?”
    â€œKnow Palfrey well?” asked Costain, startled. “I’d never met him until yesterday. I’d heard of him, of course.”
    â€œWhat do you think of him?” asked Griselda.
    Costain took his time in answering, knowing that if he were ever to make the right impression with these two members of Storr’s household, this was the great opportunity. He turned out of a side entrance onto the narrow road which led sharply upwards, reached the top, saw the other car half a mile ahead, and a stretch of clear sky and lovely countryside, an unbelievable contrast with what lay behind them.
    â€œOn the whole,” he answered at last, “I think he frightens me. Almost as much as the smog,” he added with a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl.
    â€œHow does he frighten you?” inquired Marion.
    â€œI think he’s utterly ruthless and will let nothing get in his way,” Costain answered.
    â€œI know exactly what you mean,” said Griselda, and the tone of her voice added a strange, almost prophetic warning to all that Costain had said.
    Â 
    Palfrey was not thinking of them.
    His mask was effective enough for the time being but he knew that he would not have to stay in this atmosphere long. The clear goggles were darkened by the polluted air, and although he could see within a radius of a hundred yards, beyond that there was only the thick, slowly stirring smog. It carried him back to the days of his boyhood, to days of London’s pea soupers, but there was something much worse about this, a sinister, uncanny element that struck terror to the heart.
    And he knew how bright and fresh was the air beyond it.
    Half a dozen men were moving about, all of them with what looked like mine detectors, and each stopped at one or other of the tiny cracks in the ground from which the smog seemed to come, and held the ‘detector’ over it. They were measuring the density and taking samples which would be analysed in the laboratories at Fulton. The irony of the fact that Fulton was so near was never far from his mind; nor was the possibility that, in spite of the assurances of the authorities there, this poisonous gas was a result of some unofficial experiment.
    But why and how did it come out of the ground?
    He walked through the gateway of the Manor and turned right, towards the village. He knew it fairly well, now, for he had spent much of the night here – and he did not think that he would ever be free from the effects of the macabre horror of this village of the dead.
    How many bodies had been taken away by now?
    The man who had come to warn the group in the Manor joined him, and pointed downwards. His meaning was obvious; there were no outlets of smog on the macadamised surface of the roadway, or on the paths. A red pillar box built into an old brick wall faced him on the right, with the familiar ER on it and the times of collections black on white enamel.
    It had been the postman, who had come to clear the boxes in the village for the morning collection, who had given the warning about the smog.
    Palfrey came to the Drummonds’ house.
    He wondered how Grace Drummond was, then that thought faded, for he saw two soldiers, grotesque in special protective suits, wearing masks which had built-in cylinders of oxygen. The