The Genial Dinosaur. John Russell Fearn
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“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 of this open country an object was moving and coming rapidly nearer, the sunlight reflecting from a dull grey hide.
“Upon my word, I don’t understand,” the vicar objected, twisting around in his chair—and at the same time he caught sight of the stupendous dinosaur which had now reached the outside of the distant railings.
“It’s Herbert!” Joan cried, leaping up. “Who’d have thought it?”
“Herbert? But I understood you to say that Herbert is a relative of yours— Great heavens, Mrs. Brooks, that thing there is a prehistoric monster, similar to the ones who invaded us two years ago—” The reverend gulped slightly. “I must depart at once, if you’ll forgive me.”
He snatched at his clerical hat and was through the open french windows into the grounds before Joan could stop him. When she realised what had happened, she gave a cry of dismay.
“Reverend, come back! I told you to stay here and avoid all chance of being hurt. As it is— Oh, Lor’!” Joan gasped in horror as, in racing for the rear end of the grounds where lay the gate to the main roadway, the portly vicar tripped up suddenly and fell flat on his face.
This was quite enough for the eighty-ton beast beyond the railings. It had been watching the fleeing figure intently: now the behemoth feet smashed down the railings and the dinosaur thundered towards the shouting, screaming cleric as he struggled to his feet and strove to race onwards again. That he could never make it to the gate was obvious.
Joan flashed through the french windows and sped across the lawn. She had never run so hard since she’d won the cup in her 800-yard dash in the school sports. She moved diagonally, doing her utmost to put herself between the shouting, stumbling vicar and the onrushing brute who had evidently taken a profound dislike to him.
“Herbert!” Joan yelled, at the top of her voice. “Herbert—stop! Stop, I say!”
She gambled everything on the possibility that by some fluke this brute was Herbert, a gamble she would never have taken but for Cliff’s message to her over the phone. And if she were wrong? But it was too late to think of that now, for she was straight in the path of those colossal feet. Her tiny form was all that existed between the angry dinosaur and the scurrying clerics.…
But the dinosaur slowed down! It even came to a slithering stop, the enormous feet gouging trenches in the smooth grass. Shaking in every limb, Joan stared upwards, past that mighty grey-ridged chest to the vast head. The mouth was as wide as a cavern and from its red depths came ground-shaking roars, either of fury or delight. Joan did not know which. Just at that moment she felt very much inclined to faint.…
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