The Corpse That Walked

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  The room was furnished with severe elegance. There were no knickknacks, no gentle, beautifying touches. It was essentially a man's room in a man's apartment. It was a room of dark tones, of somberness almost. And yet it was comfortable.

  Lew Hartley turned from the window. Now, as always, Wayne Hamilton experienced a slight sense of shock at sight of the other's face. He had often wondered—and secretly believed—that Hartley deliberately cultivated the Mephistophelian expression that was so vividly heightened by the jagged, slightly puckered scar over his left eye and by his unusually prominent, high-bridged nose.

  Lew Hartley had few intimates, no friends, and innumerable enemies. His brown eyes were keen and shrewd and expressive. His voice had a quality that might have permitted it to be gentle, but it never was. He was gruff to rudeness, even with those closest to him.

  The man was immensely wealthy. Only he and the suave, well-groomed attorney who was with him tonight knew just how many millions he possessed, and how he had amassed them. The investment world knew Hartley as a promoter of enterprises that were located chiefly in South America. He had formed dozens of companies and had incorporated them under dozens of names. Few of them made money for their investors; all netted considerable cash to Lewis Hartley.

  He moved toward his visitor and dropped heavily into a chair. He said harshly, "All right, Wayne, let's have it."

  Wayne Hamilton prided himself on the fact that even so brusque a man as Lew Hartley could not ruffle his own composure. He took one more placid puff on his cigar and said, "You've been in Chicago?"

  "Yes."

  "Things all right?"

  "Yes."

  "They're all right here, too. Better than all right." Wayne Hamilton was talking imperturbably, his eyes focused on the hawklike face of his most important—and most unscrupulous—client. "I landed this lad Douglas. Doc Greer has seen him several times. Physically, he's the perfect choice. In other respects, he's even better. He's abnormally honest." The delicate, sensitive lips of the attorney expanded into a slight smile. "Odd, isn't it, Lew, that the most important commodity you're buying is integrity?"

  Hartley's eyes narrowed unpleasantly. He said, "Don't play cute. Keep talking."

  "You're a gentle soul, Lew. You love to frighten people, don't you?" Hamilton flicked the ash delicately from the end of his cigar. "At any rate, my story must have sounded plausible, because Douglas—who is a long way from a fool—fell for it a hundred per cent. Perhaps because he was so eager to rescue the damsel in distress. I'll pay myself a compliment, Lew, since you won't. My idea of getting control of the company for which Alan Douglas' prospective father-in-law works, and then framing him so as to create the emergency that would make the boy willing to listen—it was rather neat, don't you think?"

  "You get paid for being smart."

  "You buy everything, don't you?"

  "I trust nothing but money. Not a damned soul. You included."

  "Splendidly spoken." Wayne Hamilton appeared to be perfectly at ease, but he wasn't. He'd never been able to get deep behind those burning eyes of Lew Hartley, never been able quite to fathom the man.

  "Since we're about ready to start the ball rolling," said Hamilton, "I'll sum things up for you. I've been doing more investigating on this end. The state and federal district attorneys are about ready to light on you with both feet. You've carried your various iniquities too far, too fast. You're probably safe until March or April. There are some loose ends they haven't quite gathered up. I'm making it as difficult for them as possible. But when they do hit, Lew, you won't have a chance. You'll get anywhere from ten to thirty years, and money won't buy you out."

  Lew's voice crackled across the room. "Quit making speeches. What the hell do you think I am—a jury?"

  "I don't think anything about you, Lew. I know. You're the most unpleasant man I've ever met."

  Hartley said something. It was grossly profane and insulting, but it elicited nothing more than a smile from Wayne Hamilton.

  "Right now," the lawyer went on calmly, "the legal authorities are content to keep an eye on you, to see that you don't slip out of their grasp. Alan Douglas supplies the answer to that. He's sailing for Havana Friday night. He returns from there to Miami, where he will have the unenviable distinction of being made over to look like you. Then, and for the winter season, the infamous Mr. Lewis Hartley will be visible to the naked eye of any detective who might be interested in making certain that he doesn't get away. And of course our honorable young friend believes that he is masquerading for manganese. If he ever suspected he was fronting for a crook, the whole deal would be off."

  Lew Hartley jerked his head around. "I don't see how I put up with you all these years, Hamilton."

  "I know you don't like me. You don't like anybody. But I have a good reputation in my profession, and I'm just as free of scruples as you are. You need me, and therefore you have me. Otherwise, you'd kick me out of the front door."

  "With pleasure."

  "So we understand each other. And we both fully understand the business setup."

  Hartley nodded. Much as he disliked his attorney, he admired the man's shrewdness, and Hamilton had planned well for Lew Hartley's future.

  It was more than two years since Wayne Hamilton had notified his client that he was facing the possibility of prison. For more than two years he had been arranging matters so that when the time came, Lew Hartley could step into a new existence under a new name and with a new identity.

  In four Pacific-coast cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle—general trading companies had been organized under four different names, the only point of similarity between them being that a man named Joel Kent was president of each.

  Lew Hartley was to become Joel Kent.

  Although he never had been personally seen by anyone in any of the four western cities, Joel Kent already had a reputation as a solid businessman. His four trading companies had conducted dummy business with each other, and checks had passed through the banks, each signed with the name of a trading company and countersigned by the president, Joel Kent. The banks had long known the signature, and bit by bit, over this two-year period, funds had been transferred to each of the companies from Lew Hartley's personal fortune so that there was now available to Joel Kent, through these sources, more than two million dollars of Lew Hartley's fortune-more than he could spend during a couple of lifetimes, yet not so great an amount that its absence from the Hartley accounts would be noticed.

  The scheme from that point onward was magnificent in its simplicity. As soon as Alan Douglas had been operated on to resemble Lew Hartley, Hartley himself was to be subjected to plastic surgery that would make him look like somebody else. Nobody in particular. The only essential point was that he should not resemble himself. His nose was to be reshaped and made smaller, the jagged scar was to be removed from over his left eye. He would emerge as Joel Kent, and would immediately go west and personally assume charge of the four companies that were operating under his name. The banks would welcome Joel Kent; no doubt about that.

  Wayne Hamilton was smiling. "We're thinking the same thing, Lew," he said. "You can live the balance of your life as a substantial and honest citizen instead of as a number in a penitentiary. The plan is perfect."

  "No plan is perfect."

  "Granted. There is always the element of human fallibility. It isn't possible to foresee every contingency. Therefore I didn't make the mistake of trying. I concentrated on finding one person, then of creating conditions that would virtually compel that person to say yes. Alan Douglas fills the bill in every particular. Accepting the big money from you, he'll play it straight across the board. Honest men may be stupid, but they're honest."

  "Suppose he got wise?"

  "He won't. Of course, if he knew, he'd talk. He's that kind of honest. But before any slip like that happened you'd be lost in the Joel Kent identity." Hamilton glanced at his watch. "Isn't Chuck Williams late?" "Chuck's never late.
"

  "Lovely lad. He's the only person I know who is more dangerous than you. And almost as unpleasant."

  The buzzer sounded. Lew Hartley didn't move. He said to his lawyer, "That's Chuck. Let him in."

  Hamilton opened the door and Chuck Williams entered. He shoved past the attorney as though that individual did not exist. He tossed his hat onto the foyer table and walked into the room where Lew Hartley sat. He said, in a flat, toneless voice, "O.K., Chief. I'm here."

  Chuck Williams might have been twenty years of age. He might have been forty. Actually, he was twenty-eight. He weighed 140 and looked smaller. His hair was of that peculiar shade of blondness which is almost colorless. His cheeks were pallid. His nose was small. His mouth was a thin red slash across an expressionless face.

  But it was the eyes that demanded attention. They looked straight at you, saw everything, and betrayed nothing. At times they were agate and at times they were the color of steel. They were dangerous, inhuman eyes.

  The young man moved gracefully. He gave the impression of a coiled spring. If he was capable of emotion of any sort, it certainly was not reflected on his face.

  Lew Hartley said curtly, "Sit down, Chuck."

  The visitor did not move. He said, "I'm doin' all right."

  Even Lew Hartley's personality was dimmed by the dangerous sureness of the youthful visitor. Lew gestured toward Wayne Hamilton and said, "He'll talk. He loves to shoot off his mouth."

  Hamilton flushed. He said to Chuck, "You're sailing for Havana Friday night at eleven on the Tropicana. The name of the man you're covering is Alan Douglas."

  Chuck made no answer at all. He merely waited.

  "He's a rather good sort, Chuck. After he assumes the role of Lew Hartley, it's your job to keep his foot from slipping. But what is most important is that you're to keep any former acquaintance of Lew's from getting close to him."

  Chuck said, "You don't have to tell me things twice."

  "Any extra instruction you need—anything unusual that comes up—get in touch with me. When the season starts, see that Douglas keeps in circulation, just as Lew used to do: gambling houses, night clubs, Hialeah, the dog tracks, jai alai games. The feds will think its Lew, so they'll be satisfied. And then..." He hesitated and Lew Hartley broke in coldly, brutally, cruelly.

  "Then," he said, "an accident is going to happen to the man who is posing as me. He's going to be found dead some morning. My will will be probated and my estate divided. You fellows will get yours. I'll be safe. Nobody will ever look for Lew Hartley because Lew Hartley will be dead."

  Hartley's brown eyes burned into the colorless ones of Chuck Williams.

  "That's where you come in, Chuck," he said. "You're to wait until Hamilton gives the word. Not before. Then you're to kill Alan Douglas."

  Chapter Five

  The steamship Tropicana, 6,924 gross tons, looked tiny at a pier that had been designed for transatlantic aristocrats six times her size, but there was a large element of excitement, of eagerness, of noise and hustle and bustle, as crew and passengers made ready for departure.

  In Cabin B-17, on the deck below the promenade, Alan Douglas and Gail Foster looked around the tiny, two-berthed room. Gail cast a glance at a heavy unfamiliar suitcase that had been shoved into a corner. She said, "I see you've got a roommate."

  Alan nodded. He had known that he was to have a traveling companion, but he did not say so. He said, "These ships are crowded every trip."

  "It isn't much of a boat, is it?"

  He grinned. "I'll have fun. I've never traveled much, you know."

  Gail was trying to be gay, casual, cheerful. She did not want him to know that she was not entirely free from apprehension. The feeling that persisted was so utterly silly that it annoyed her. But there was an inexplicable electric tension in that little cabin.

  Alan sensed her unrest and put his arms around her. He said, "You don't look very happy."

  "Am I supposed to, with my best fiancé’ deserting me for six months?"

  "I'm flattered—and sorry. I hoped you'd enjoy your vacation from me. I hoped..."

  Her fingers brushed his cheek in quick caress. "I know, Alan. I'm a bit of an ingrate. I don't mean to be, really. Believe me, dear—there isn't a moment I'm not grateful to you. You ought to see Dad these days. And you know how different you have made the whole future look. It's all your fault, Mr. Douglas, if I've fallen much too much in love with you."

  He tried to laugh it off, but his efforts did not meet with any outstanding success. He was sorry that the element of deception entered so importantly into this unusual mission. He said, "Think of what's in store for you: a long letter from Valparaiso telling you of my travels. What gal could ask more?"

  "I could."

  He caught her to him suddenly and kissed her hard on the lips. "That's how I feel," he said. "I just talk the other way." He kissed her again.

  Their embrace was interrupted by the hoarse bellow of the ship's siren, by the earnest gong-banging of a steward, and by a voice that bellowed for all visitors to go ashore.

  They walked along the crowded corridor and up the narrow stairs to the promenade deck. She didn't kiss him again because this would have been a different sort of kiss, and she wanted to remember the last one down there in the cabin. Besides, she didn't want him to know how she really felt, and so she said something very gay and pressed his fingers and scurried down the gangplank to take her place in the cold night air where she could stare up at him as he lounged against the rail and the Tropicana began to back from the pier.

  When Alan could no longer see Gail on the pier, he went below, partly because he was tired and partly because he wished to meet the man who was to be his companion, his tutor, and his bodyguard.

  He walked into B-17. He saw a slender, wiry figure standing in front of the inadequate hanging closet. He said, "Good evening."

  Chuck Williams turned. His agate eyes took in the tall, rangy figure of Alan Douglas from head to foot. It was a deliberate, impersonal inspection, accompanied by no change of expression, no word of greeting.

  Alan experienced a moment of shock. There was something frightening about the smaller man. Then Chuck spoke. His voice was as colorless as his eyes. He said, "Hello," and let it lay there.

  Alan tried not to become annoyed. He forced a measure of geniality into his tone as he said, "I'm Alan Douglas."

  "Yeah." Chuck finished hanging a suit in the miniature closet. Then he said, "Chuck Williams."

  Alan hesitated. Normally he would have offered his hand, but something restrained him. Queer lad, this bodyguard. Cold as a fish. Alan shrugged. If he didn't want to be friendly, that was his business.

  It was Chuck who broke the silence. He said, in that same emotionless, flat voice, "You're built just like Lew."

  "I wouldn't be knowing. I never met him."

  Chuck Williams made no answer, and in an effort to put things on a more cordial basis, Alan said, "How about a nightcap?"

  "O.K. by me."

  They walked upstairs to the bar. Alan ordered a brandy and Chuck asked for plain carbonated water. "You're not a drinker, are you?" Alan said.

  "No."

  Something about the situation struck Alan as funny. He threw back his head and laughed with genuine amusement. "Are you always this way, Chuck, or is this something special?"

  Williams' eyes flickered. "I don't get it."

  "We're traveling together. We'll see a lot of each other. I was wondering if you ever warm up."

  "I'm supposed to teach you." Chuck's voice was flat. "Not kiss you."

  Alan paid the check and rose. "All right, if that's the way you want it. I'm going to catch some sleep. Coming?"

  "Yeah."

  They walked back to the cabin. As they undressed Chuck Williams said, "You can be tough, can't you?"

  "I suppose so."

  "That's good."

  "Why?"

  "Because Lew is tough. He growls all the time. You got to practice being
that way with people you don't know."

  "I understand. But isn't it different with you?"

  "You don't know me."

  Chuck's words were more than slightly sardonic. He was thinking that Alan Douglas certainly did not know him. He wondered what Alan would think if he suspected that he was trying to make friends with the man who was eventually to murder him.

  Chapter Six

  At the mouth of Havana harbor, the Tropicana stopped its engines and waited for the pilot boat. The sea was like glass, and at five o'clock in the afternoon the warmth of the subtropical sunshine was more than pleasant.

  Alan Douglas leaned over the starboard rail and gazed at the fascinating vista of the great, sprawling, cosmopolitan city with its miles on miles of white and yellow houses, the great hotels, the dome of the Capitol.

  Alan felt a desire to talk, and so he addressed a remark to the taciturn young man at his side. He said, "That's lovely, isn't it?" and Chuck Williams answered tonelessly, "So what?"

  The pilot swung aboard from the snub-nosed little pilot boat, and the engines of the Tropicana started turning again. The ship moved into the harbor, so close to shore that Alan could see people waving from the sea wall, and could even hear the deep-throated cries of the street vendors hopefully calling their wares: piruli, manis, and fritos. He caught a brief, breath-taking view of the great esplanade stretched between the presidential palace and the river front, and then found himself glancing up incredibly narrow little streets on which trolley cars shoved unconcerned pedestrians out of the way. Then they were nuzzling into a huge pier without benefit of tug. The Tropicana was tied up and stewards raced along the decks announcing that the immigration officials were on board and all passengers must have their landing cards stamped.

  Less than forty minutes later, Alan and Chuck Williams had passed successfully the casual examination of their luggage and were whirling through a maze of narrow streets toward the Sevilla Hotel. They registered and were assigned a room together on the sixth floor. Alan flung open the window and looked down fascinatedly at the magnificence of the Prado, then returned his gaze to his uncommunicative traveling companion. He said, "Nothing excites you, does it, Chuck?"