The Voiceless Ones

By John Creasey

Dr. Palfrey is faced with one of the most difficult problems and a more powerful adversary than he has previously met. A mysterious disease strikes down some of the world’s most powerful figures; then their daughters also become victims. Palfrey and Z5 undertake a perilous journey to oust the cause and the truth and to prevent domination of the planet by an irresponsible power and fearful new weapons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Stratus
• Release date: Oct 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780755138463

John Creasey

Master crime fiction writer John Creasey's near 600 titles have sold more than 80 million copies in over 25 languages under both his own name and ten other pseudonyms. His style varied with each identity and led to him being regarded as a literary phenomena. Amongst the many series written were 'Gideon of Scotland Yard', 'The Toff', 'The Baron', 'Dr. Palfrey' and 'Inspector West', as JJ Marric, Michael Halliday, Patrick Dawlish and others. During his lifetime Creasey enjoyed an ever increasing reputation both in the UK and overseas, especially the USA. This was further enhanced by constant revision of his works in order to assure the best possible be presented to his readers and also by many awards, not least of which was being honoured twice by the Mystery Writers of America, latterly as Grand Master. He also found time to found the Crime Writers Association and become heavily involved in British politics - standing for Parliament and founding a movement based on finding the best professionals in each sphere to run things. 'He leads a field in which Agatha Christie is also a runner.' - Sunday Times.

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Copyright & Information

The Voiceless Ones

© John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1973-2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

John Creasey

John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the 'C' section in stores. They included:

Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

He also founded the British Crime Writers' Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey's stories are as compelling today as ever.

Prologue

The peace of the world, even the future of mankind, can depend upon the decisions taken in the next grave months, boomed the silver-haired man. He stood alone on the great rostrum, with three thousand people in front of him, spellbound by the magnificence of his voice, the power of his oratory, and the might of his presence. And as I stand here, one among so many in this great city of London, I swear to you …

Quite suddenly, without the slightest warning, with the most strange and weird effect, the words stopped coming from his mouth. In the huge hall with its serried seats and ornate wrought-iron gallery, there was silence. No sound came from the orator’s mouth, no sound came from anyone in the audience.

But for a few moments the man’s lips moved as if he were still speaking.

Slowly, he faltered. At last, he stopped, and looked about him. He opened his mouth again, and seemed to cough, as if to clear his throat. His lips formed words, but made no sound. He looked about him, desperately, seized a glass of water and swallowed some, then moved forward, spreading his arms as if in benediction. After a moment, he opened his mouth again, raised his right hand, and tried to form a word.

No sound came.

In the audience, one man smothered a laugh.

From the front seats, men and women moved to go to the speaker’s help, and from the audience a man cried: He’s been struck dumb!

He can’t speak.

"He’s been struck dumb!"

The cry was taken up until it was like thunder in that vast arena.

In the Scala Theatre in Milan, with its red velvet and its brass and its great ceiling, every seat was filled. In the stalls and in the front row of the dress circle men and women were in evening dress, the women in vivid colours, the men in the black and white which touched even the most ordinary-looking with distinction. Signor Benito Benvenuti, the greatest tenor not only in that land of tenors but in the whole world, was singing. Except for the magic voice there was no sound. Except for the movement of the singer’s lips and breast there was no movement; it was as if the whole night was brushed with a beauty rarely caught; as if this man who was so far above all others, supreme among all singers, was reaching new heights, new wonders.

Up, up, the voice soared, then suddenly, unbelievably – without the slightest warning, the sound faded away.

The singer’s lips moved; his chest moved; his hands, suddenly clenched, rose towards his chin, but no sound came from him; not even a whisper of sound. In the great auditorium the silence was now absolute. No one stirred, and every eye was turned towards the stage. There stood Benito Benvenuti, mouth agape, utterly silent.

As suddenly, the orchestra began to play.

The curtains were drawn to shroud the tragic figure of a man who did not seem to move at all; even his lips were still. Then from the audience there came a great cry of anguish; a groan which grew in volume until it became not a groan but a wail: an awful, unchanging wail of distress.

In the fabulous Astradome at Houston, Texas, the greatest revivalist of modern times stood in the biggest auditorium of all time, and, as he preached, watched the people among the fantastic crowd. Here they were both black and white, in massed array not only from the State of Texas but from all parts of the South, the Deep South and the South West. It was the second week of the most sensational series of religious meetings ever heard even in the Bible Belt: and now the singing and the chanting, the praying and the weeping, were all done, and the Man of Men himself, with a great, stilled choir behind him, spoke to the multitude as if his were indeed the voice of God. The stillness that his very presence caused was absolute. In the pregnant pauses between his terrifying pronouncements there was no rustle, no coughing, no sound of any kind.

"And the people of God shall bow down before the will of God … And the wrath of God … All those who do not repent their sins will be struck down … There is no fury like the fury of the one and only God when he is spurned by the multitude … And I say to you that the voice of God is speaking through me, and if I should ever mislead you, or lie to you, or break faith with God, then may I be struck down.

"The wrath of God is terrible to behold.

"The sufferings of men damned by God to everlasting hell will make the purgatory of this world seem like the very gateway to heaven …

I tell you that—

But the thunder of his denunciation broke. It did not change from a dying roar to fading rumble: it ceased. And the Man of Men stood with his arms stretched out and his mouth wide open. At last, in the deathly silence a voice was raised from the body of the multitude, thin and small, yet penetrating.

It’s the wrath of God.

It is the vengeance of the Lord, a woman cried.

It is the visitation of the Devil.

And suddenly there was weeping and wailing and a gnashing of teeth and a beating of breasts and a stamping of feet while the Man of Men stood like a statue. Slowly the choir behind him began to sing, unevenly at first but soon more strongly and in unison.

"Oh God our help in ages past …"

In the House of Commons, in London, the Foreign Secretary was replying to a question put by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. In his clear voice, he was saying: It is not the Government’s intention to divulge to the House and so to the world at this stage its plans for security but—

His voice just died away.

It is now known beyond any doubt that the Government of the United States is deliberately fomenting unrest in the Middle East, as it has for so many years in the Far East. It is the intention of the Soviet Government to give all aid to the victims of naked aggression wherever they—

The Chairman of the Presidium mouthed the words that were meant to follow, but no words came.

The voices of the leaders of men in countless spheres of life and throughout the world were silenced, one by one. Every nation, every government, every profession, every religious sect or faith, every form of art, every field of sport – all of these suffered. In some cases the voices came back, in some they remained silent until it seemed they would never return. A few were husky. Fear struck at men in high positions for there was no certainty at any time that they would be able to finish what they were in the middle of saying.

Doctors and surgeons examined the victims, swabs were taken, every kind of test run. There proved to be a common factor: the ailment, which might be caused by a drug, affected the larynx and the back of the throat, which were badly swollen. The condition often responded to local injections of the drug curalils, one of the more commonly-used muscle relaxants. In several cases the curalis was ineffective and the swelling became so acute that the patient, unable to breathe, died of suffocation.

One of the men consulted in the early stages was Dr. Palfrey, of Z5, the organisation which owed allegiance not to any single nation but to all nations and all peoples. Z5, which in recent years had grown into a worldwide organisation with a most elaborate system of communication with its agents, and indeed with governments, had the dual task of co-ordinating all the reports which came in from the research laboratories trying to isolate the cause, which was most likely to be some unknown drug, and also finding out how the affliction was spread.

It could be a natural phenomenon; and so threaten the whole world simply by infection.

It could be a drug distributed by some human agency for some purpose of its own.

Palfrey, who had the trust of all governments, even those who were so often in conflict with each other, kept his mind open about the source and possible motivation. But after a while he made a discovery which, for the time being, he kept to himself.

All of the victims were men; not a single woman was among them.

Once he was sure of this he made up a list of women who might conceivably be suspected of wishing to silence the human male; even to the overthrowing of the traditional rule of men. He visited the leading Z5 agents in Washington, Peking, Moscow, and other area headquarters outside of London, to get help for this purpose. He went to Moscow first because the leader of Z5 there was Stefan Andromovitch, his oldest friend and closest associate. To his acute distress he found Stefan, a giant of a man, gaunt and skeleton-thin.

The doctors say it is caused by a form of leukaemia, Sap, but that with the right treatment, and with rest in the country, I shall recover. At such a time I hate to have to leave you without help, but our doctors here are extremely good. If I am to live, I must do what I am told.

There was no choice, and Palfrey left him, more heavy of heart than he had been since he had lost his wife, long, long years ago. He went back to London and finished drawing up a list of a hundred women in key positions in industry, politics and social affairs. Then, through Z5, he began to screen these women as thoroughly as he would any prospective agent for Z5. Police records, social activity, political activity, sexual deviations if any, love affairs, friendships, past and present employment: nothing was missed, for Z5 had evolved a screening process of a thoroughness unrivalled even in the dictator countries.

This was all being done when he first heard of the disaster at Gay’s School, on the outskirts of London.

Chapter One

The Defiant Ones

As Mary Essing approached the door of the classroom, there was silence; deep and ominous silence, and to her, frightening.

She was only ten or twelve feet away from the door, so there could be no mistake; it was still and quiet as if the room were empty; but it was not empty. Inside were twenty-seven little hellions. Hellions. One by one, taken as an individual, each could be sweet and charming, but altogether as they were now: hellions.

Oh, how she had come to hate them!

She had no idea what they were planning. Some shock, some surprise, some indignity. Something which would suddenly make them burst out into raucous laughter at her, something as crude as a pot of water, even of ink or paint, balanced over the door: or something much more subtle. The greater the subtlety, usually, the more complete the silence, and she had never known it more complete than it was now.

She missed a step.

They would know that, of course; there was a spyhole at which one of them would be perched to give signal messages. She did not know where the spyhole was, nor who usually manned it.

She did not want to go in.

She had been in this English private school for two months as a teacher in geography. As taken by her it was a subject which covered not only the geographical patterns of the world and the oceans and the mountains and the valleys, but related elementary subjects: what grew or was mined or was manufactured, and where; which nations were prosperous and which were poor; and, in the simplest form, why. She had studied the subjects at Horizon, a small red-brick university in a southern county, had become fiercely involved with the peoples of the world and their plights. The faculty had been extremely liberal in its views, the sexual, social and recreational aspects of each nation were studied there, and freely discussed. She had been overjoyed when she had been appointed to this school, Gay’s, for it was one of the better ‘advanced’ schools of its kind, with pupils from the middle and the monied classes; from families whose scions ought to be able to think. At first she had been full of hope despite obvious problems, but now hope had virtually gone.

She should turn away and go to the school secretary and say: I’m sorry, I can’t go on. I’m terribly sorry but they’ve defeated me.

In fact, with her fingers actually on the brass handle of the door, she turned and looked across the hall and the staircase which led to the administration quarters. A teacher came up the stairs, short-sighted Dorothy Webb, who probably did not know that anyone else was in sight. Dorothy turned into the form room of 3A, a much more easily controllable form than hers next door – which was 3B.

The silence was not broken even by a snigger; they had some particularly hideous thing in store for her today.

Mary Essing drew a deep breath, gripped the handle more firmly, and stepped inside.

Every girl – every girl without exception – was staring at the door and so at her.

There were the bright eyes and the dull, the sleepy eyes and the lively, the blue, grey, green, brown, hazel, even one pair of yellow eyes. At least four sets of false eyelashes showed on the young faces, and two sets of eyebrows were either plucked right out or shaved. Most of the girls wore their hair long, at least to the shoulders, some untidy, some beautifully brushed. A few had short hair, one had flaxen pigtails, several had their hair drawn back severely from the forehead and tied in a ponytail at the back.

Every pair of eyes was turned towards her.

Next moment, every pair of eyes was turned towards the blackboard, as if at a given signal. Her instinctive movement was to turn and look, but experience had taught her that this was exactly what they wanted and that if she did so the silence would be broken by a