The Corpse That Walked

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  "Nine o'clock?"

  "I'll be sittin' right down in the lobby," he smiled, "from eight-thirty."

  When Gail went downstairs to the lobby the next morning, he was already there, hoisting his ponderous figure out of a club chair, coming forward to greet her. "The chariot awaits without," he announced. "So let's get rollin'."

  They rolled. All that day and the next and the next. They proved facts that they already knew, and then found themselves at a dead end. Yes, Alan had arrived in Miami. He personally had signed his customs declaration. So far as they could discover, he had not checked into any hotel or hospital. There was no record of his having left Miami by plane or steamship. And so when they drove back to Gail's hotel on the night of the fifth day, she announced that she was through.

  "There's nowhere else to look, Vance. You don't have to tell me. I'll go back to New York tomorrow—and wait. I'm bound to hear from him sooner or later."

  "I reckon so." His fingers closed on her arm. "I sure am sorry, Gail. But maybe you were all wrong in the first place. Maybe there was a little change in plans. But you shouldn't worry. You haven't got the faintest idea what his bosses might have told him."

  "That's the point, Vance. I don't even know who his bosses are. I only know that they gave him twenty thousand dollars when they knew perfectly well he'd have taken the job for less than half that amount. It doesn't add up right and it never will."

  "You've done your best, Gail. Nothin' mo' you can do. Now, tell me: Have I been a good boy?"

  "You'll never know what you've meant..."

  "I'm askin' a favor, honey."

  "What is it?"

  "I want one evenin' of fun with you. I want to take you places an' show you things. We're havin' a great big season an' you haven't seen any of it. I want to take you around so when you do go back to New York you won't be thinkin' of Miami as just a lot of hospitals and hotel registers and things like that. So what do you say?"

  She said yes, and promised to have a good time. After all, she had done everything possible, and Vance deserved a break. He wanted to take her places. Very well, she'd go, and she'd darn well see to it that he enjoyed himself. It was the only way she knew of saying thanks.

  As a matter of fact, once they started, she found herself having a good time without making a conscious effort. Vance was bright and gay; he knew everybody everywhere. She was introduced to scores of people, and was flattered by the pride that Vance seemed to take in her.

  She saw Miami in all its gaiety and glitter and madness. They went to night clubs, they saw some jai alai, they went to more night clubs. And they wound up shortly after midnight at the gaudy, tinseled spot that at that moment was perhaps most in favor with the winter crowd. There was a gambling room in the rear of the place, and they drifted in to watch the play.

  One dice table at the far end of the room was jammed. Every available inch of space about it was taken, and the crowd of onlookers gave mute testimony to the fact that there was some heavy play going on. Vance said, "This ought to be interesting."

  They approached the table. Gail could see the faces of the croupiers and the backs of most of the players. Vance was saying, "Sometimes they have a real big play..." and then he realized that she had stopped walking. He turned toward her, smiling, and the smile left his lips.

  Gail was staring at the crowd clustered about the dice table. She was gazing at the back of a tall man who was standing motionless in the midst of that throng. Her face was pallid, her eyes wide. Vance said, "What is it, honey?"

  She moistened her lips and pointed toward the tall man. "That," she said, "is Alan!"

  Vance whistled. He started to say something, then changed his mind as he caught the strained, bewildered look on the girl's face.

  Gail started forward. She felt sensations of relief, surprise, and more than a hint of resentment. Of all the wild possibilities she had considered, this was the most remote: Alan Douglas in Miami, obviously enjoying himself, concentrating on a dice game!

  Gail Foster shouldered her way through the crowd. She touched the tall man on the arm. She said, "Alan! What in the world..."

  The man whom she had called Alan turned slowly from the dice table. He turned so that he faced her.

  She experienced an instant of shock. The man who had been Alan was Alan no longer. Alan's eyes looked straight into hers, but it was not Alan Douglas' face.

  The face into which she gazed was an evil face. A scar over the left eye imparted an oddly sinister appearance. The nose was large and hooked. There was a black mustache. She had the uncomfortable, almost terrifying sensation of a nightmare. And then the man spoke. His voice was gruff, harsh, rude.

  He said, "What do you want?"

  The color flooded back to her cheeks. She dropped back a step. She said, "I'm sorry ... I thought..."

  Other people were looking at them. She saw that this man was holding a stack of red and green chips. He said, "Don't touch me when I'm gambling."

  The rudeness was inexcusable. It was like a slap in the face. Vance Crawford moved forward, his face flushed. He took Gail by the arm and drew her away.

  "That's Lew Hartley," he explained. "He's coarse as mud. Everybody dislikes him."

  "That's understandable." She said that only because she felt that she had to say something. The whole thing was unreal. Vance said, "Let's go back and dance," but she wasn't listening.

  She was staring at the back of the tall man, who once again was absorbed in his gambling. Instinct was battling against cold logic. She saw Hartley raise his right hand and rub it against his cheek. She saw him nod at something that was said. She saw him light a cigarette, using one hand—not two—to shield his match.

  Those gestures belonged to Alan Douglas. Little, inconsequential mannerisms, but they were his. The longer she looked, the more certain she became. She turned to Vance Crawford.

  "You're sure that's Lew Hartley?" she said.

  "Of course I'm sure, honey. Everybody down here knows him."

  Her voice was tight. She said, "That isn't Lew Hartley. That's Alan."

  Vance laughed. "You're crazy, Gail—plumb crazy."

  "Listen, Vance," she said, "and call me crazy again if you want. But I'm not crazy. That man you call Lew Hartley is Alan Douglas. And I'm going to stay right here in Miami until I prove it."

  Chapter Eleven

  Biscayne Fronton was crowded. Out on the tremendous three-walled cancha some of the greatest jai alai players in the world were performing brilliantly in what is probably the fastest and most dangerous game in the world.

  This particular elimination contest was unusually exciting. Two recently imported Cuban players, the thin, bespectacled maestro, Epifano, and his doubles partner, Macala, had started from nothing and were now within a point of winning the contest and of paying off heavily on the mutuel machines. The spectators were yelling, some for the brilliant Cuban team, others for the Basque pair that opposed them for the playing of the final point.

  The rally was sensational, and it ended abruptly when the young and shrewd Macala made a dead kill in the lower left corner of the 168-foot playing arena. There was a burst of cheering, accompanied by the groans of those who had lost their bets. Gail Foster, sitting with Vance Crawford, pointed to a man who was seated in the first row. She said, "Look—Alan lost."

  The man she called Alan, and whom Vance Crawford still insisted was named Lew Hartley, tossed a sheaf of mutuel tickets to the floor. Vance said, "He bet heavy on that one."

  "Alan can't afford—"

  Vance turned to the girl at his side. He said, "I don't know much about Alan's finances, honey, but Lew Hartley, who just pitched those losing tickets away, can afford a thousand times that much."

  Gail refused to argue. She gazed down at the group in the box just behind the protection screen. They had come in during the playing of the third of seven games: the tall, hawklike man whom they called Lew Hartley, the vividly beautiful copper-haired girl, and a rather inconspicuous yo
ung man who moved with an oddly light, effortless stride.

  Since that first startling glimpse of the man called Hartley, Gail had managed to see him many times—always at a distance. On each occasion he had been accompanied by Sunny Ralston and also by the agate-eyed young man who Vance identified as Lew Hartley's personal bodyguard.

  Gail had made no further attempt to speak to this tall man who she believed was Alan. She had placed herself always so that she could study his unconsidered gestures. Each day she became more certain and more bewildered.

  She tore her glance away from the trio in the box and turned to the big man at her side. She said, "You're not enjoying the jai alai, Vance. You look exhausted."

  A slow smile creased his lips and he shook his head. "That isn't hardly the right word, honey. If it was anybody but you, I'd say I was plumb exasperated. For three days we've been traipsin' all over Miami, you and me. We've been to horse races, dog tracks, jai alai, gambling houses, and night clubs. And you're just as crazy now as you were at the beginning."

  A shadow appeared briefly in her clear gray eyes. "You haven't much faith in feminine intuition, have you?"

  "No, ma'am, I sure haven't. Not any more." He leaned forward and spoke earnestly. "Look, Gail, ever since the other night when you saw Lew in that gambling house, I've been doin' a heap of investigatin'. Lew's house was opened on the sixth of January, like it is every year. He got heah the next day. Everybody that knows him says it's Lew."

  Gail said, "I've been trailing him for three days and nights, Vance. I've seen him when he didn't know he was being watched." She laughed, but there wasn't much mirth in it. "I know he looks like Lew Hartley. I know he lives in Hartley's house. I know he does all the things Hartley is supposed to do. But, Vance, you've got to believe I'm not demented when I still insist that it isn't Lew Hartley at all. It's Alan."

  He sighed. "I don't know how I keep on bein' so fond of you, Gail."

  She pressed her point, almost as though she were trying to convince herself. "When you know somebody as intimately as I know Alan—well, you see things. Little gestures, little mannerisms. I've seen those day after day when we've picked him up at the tracks and other places. I know it's Alan. I couldn't be wrong."

  "You ain't bein' right reasonable either, Gail. Mind you, I'm not kickin'. Anything that keeps you in Miami is grand with me. But I don't like to see you getting all hot and bothered over any idea as absurd as this one." He lighted a cigarette and gazed at her reflectively through the thin haze of fragrant smoke. "I reckon heaps of folks would be surprised at the suggestion that Lew isn't Lew. Sunny Ralston, for instance."

  Gail looked away for a moment, and her voice was a shade deeper when she spoke again. "What is her relationship to Hartley?"

  Vance Crawford shrugged. "That's pretty obvious, isn't it? I don't reckon I got to start teaching you the facts of life. Sunny's been comin' heah with Lew for three seasons. Keeps house for him, you might say. Gives parties and all. Gave one last night, as a matter of fact. Now, if you can give me one good reason why they should make Alan look like Lew Hartley and send him down heah to have fun... if you'll tell me where Lew Hartley is... if you'll make me believe it's possible that Lew's girl friend is playing house with Alan but still thinks it's Lew—honest, Gail, I get peeved at myself for even arguin' about it."

  She said, "I don't blame you. I get angry at myself."

  "But you're still sure."

  "Yes. And no." She looked down at the box again. Sunny Ralston had turned slightly so that Gail could see her exquisite profile. She was talking to Hartley, and she was laughing.

  Spectators were drifting in from the betting booths. An obsequious attendant approached Hartley and said something. Gail saw the boy back away suddenly as though he'd been slapped. That seemed to fit in with Lew Hartley's reputation.

  Then she saw Sunny Ralston shrug into her ermine wrap. She saw the tall man adjust it about soft, bare shoulders. She saw the bodyguard get up and stand motionless, looking at nothing.

  Gail caught a clear view of the face of the man with Sunny Ralston. It was a grim, unpleasant, frightening face. It was stern and cold and hard.

  Gail's uncertainty returned. This wasn't Alan. It couldn't be Alan.

  Then the man raised his eyes, as though he had felt hers upon him. Across the heads of restless spectators the eyes of Alan Douglas looked straight into the eyes of his fiancee. And it was at that instant that Gail Foster reached a definite, irrevocable decision. She turned to her companion and said quietly, "I'm staying in town, Vance, until I find out for sure."

  "I'm not unhappy about that, honey."

  She said, "That job you said you could get for me—"

  "I can get it, all right. If won't pay much."

  "That doesn't matter. I have some money saved. The thing about this job is that it'll give me an entree—perhaps even to one of Miss Ralston's parties at Mr. Hartley's place."

  "Uh-huh. It'll do that. But you sure are stickin' your neck way out, Gail." He glanced at his watch. " 'Tain't as early as it was. S'pose we start travelin'. Tomorrow mornin' we'll go see Lee and Niki about the job."

  Lee Thorpe was a former newspaperman. He was thirty-three years of age, tall, angular, pleasant, perpetually worried, and ridiculously in love with his wife. And Niki Thorpe was everything that her husband wasn't. She was short and stout and always about to embark on a rigid diet. She bubbled over with chronic good humor. She was six years her husband's junior, and adored him. They owned a cozy little cottage, two Boston terriers of assorted sexes, a garden full of flowers, a somewhat asthmatic car that they were always intending to trade in on a new one, a modest mortgage, and a magazine called Surf and Sunshine.

  Surf and Sunshine was a hardy perennial. From April first to January first each year it lay dormant. From the beginning to the end of the Miami season it sprang into blossom and brought headaches and income to the unpredictable Thorpes.

  It was a class publication, issued weekly on the finest grade of paper. Its art work, which was supervised by Niki, was excellent; its format unusually attractive. It had a small but important circulation among the winter colony, whose comings and goings and carryings-on it chronicled at great length. It printed lots of names and lots of pictures, and specialized in glowing accounts of the social activities of wealthy winter residents. It made a valiant—and fairly successful—effort to be smart. It existed by virtue of its advertising.

  Vance Crawford conducted Gail into the tiny office that was shared by the irrepressible Niki and her thin and worried husband. Vance said, "Howdy. This is the Gail Foster I was telling you about."

  Gail liked them both instantly. Niki shook hands and said, "It doesn't pay much," and Gail said, "I'll take it," and Niki waved toward a battered oak desk in a tiny cubicle and stated, "It's yours, Miss Foster, if you can stand working for two people who aren't quite normal."

  Vance said, "She'll fit from that angle. And at first I'll squire her around. Not because she's any fun, but I'm an eagle scout and I need another merit badge."

  Niki said, "Vance knows the ropes. We dish out publicity to those who have enough money to patronize those who have enough money to advertise in Surf and Sunshine. So when do you start?"

  Gail said, "I've already started. And if you happen to get caught in a jam, don't forget I'm an expert stenographer."

  Vance said good-by and drove back to his office in Miami, leaving Gail with her new employers. Niki was called to the telephone and Lee Thorpe perched his lanky figure on Gail's desk and gave vent to sage advice.

  "The job's a cinch," he told her, "if you keep your eyes and ears open. Don't forget that there's hardly a man, woman, or child who doesn't crave publicity. You've got two strikes on 'em to start with. Sometimes they play cute, as though they didn't want it. Just back away from that kind, and you'll usually discover that they run you ragged to say they've changed their minds.

  "Everything I've told you goes double down here in Miami. The swank places and
hot spots are all glad to co-operate. They live on publicity. You won't have any trouble finding out that Mr. and Mrs. Big gave a party. The managers will get all the dope for you and beg you to print it."

  Gail said, "This may sound silly, Mr. Thorpe, but does social standing count?"

  "Nope. Just bank accounts. Our job is to tickle the vanity of the spenders. Then they patronize the firms that advertise in our sheet. But remember this: we're not a newspaper. We print nothing but pleasant inanities."

  "I'm beginning to get the idea. You're a sort of social register."

  "But phony."

  "I understand. If it's a big, expensive party, you print it."

  "Right."

  "Even if it's given by somebody like—well, say, this fellow Hartley?"

  "Hartley? Sure. Especially him. He spends plenty. He and his girl friend, Sunny Ralston."

  Gail picked her words carefully: "There's no question about their relationship, is there—hers and Hartley's?"

  "Good Lord, no. That checks 'em out of a lot of the nicer private homes, but they're welcome everywhere else—including the columns of Surf and Sunshine."

  He rose as Niki walked back into the room. He said to his wife, "I've been giving her the lowdown. She gets the slant all right. We were just talking about Lew Hartley and that blonde bombshell of his."

  Niki laughed. "You've got to meet her, Gail. Sunny's an experience. And she loves publicity."

  Gail said, "She must be interesting. But how about Hartley?"

  Niki made a grimace of distaste. "You'll probably meet him. Sunny's always entertaining. Just remember he's a natural-born louse. Don't let him make you mad."

  Gail Foster smiled. "I'll be on guard," she said. "As a matter of fact, I have a hunch that Mr. Hartley and I will get along very well together."

  Chapter Twelve

  In the solitude of Lew Hartley's impressive bedroom, Alan Douglas finished his morning coffee, relaxed against the pillows, and gazed through the window at a sundrenched beach and a sapphire sea. He stretched lazily and sighed.