The Man Who Died Twice

by The Man Who Died Twice (retail) (epub)

  “Fabyan?” he said. “He was here tonight.”

  MacQuade sighed and pulled one-handed to a sitting position while he crushed out his cigarette.

  “Mike owes me money. He’s got two boats in island trade and one building, and he had some bad luck a while back. He stands to lose the whole business Monday if he can’t pay up or borrow elsewhere, which he knows is unlikely.”

  “Is he going to lose the business?”

  “He thinks so. Normally he would.”

  “What about the blond guy, Tenney?”

  “Tenney?” MacQuade gave the word a distasteful inflection. “I’m having Tenney investigated in London. Should hear any day now.… Tenney,” he said, “wants to marry Alma. I told him the other day that the only way he’d ever manage it would be over my dead body.”

  Jim asked for no elaboration. He could not get the thought of the poisoned cat out of his mind. He looked at the old man in the chair—not old: sixty-five, but looking older than his years. His past was certainly not unblemished, for he was a driver, a corner-cutter, ambitious, insistent on his rights. And yet—poison? Not for him, after the things he had done and the dangers he had faced.

  “A woman could use poison as well as a man.”

  “Yes,” the answer came wearily, “a woman could.”

  “You wouldn’t even have to come in the room.” Jim glanced at the table next to the window. “Anyone could reach right in and doctor that milk.”

  MacQuade nodded. “Maybe it’s only a coincidence, but I wanted you to know. Anyway, I’ve had enough of it for tonight.… I’m tired,” he said. “Give me a hand, son.”

  Jim stepped up and helped the other to his feet. “I’ll sleep out here tonight.” MacQuade loosened his belt and gave Jim’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “I feel a lot better having you with me, boy,” he said. “You can snap off the room light when you go out.”

  Jim left the way he had come in, down the hall and out on the side veranda. He did not know who might be left in the drawing-room but he did not want to talk now, so he moved down to the sloping lawn to light a cigarette while he tried to bring some logic to his disordered thoughts.

  It was not an easy process. Even before he had talked to MacQuade he had begun to question his wisdom in coming; now he found himself thrashing about in water too deep for him. He did not for a minute believe that coincidence was a factor in the story he had just heard. He felt that MacQuade was of the same mind, and although the more realistic of his thoughts refused to accept such a conclusion, some secret part of him could not banish the insidious thought that what he had heard was but a prologue to some tragedy yet to come.

  For he knew now that the tension he had felt in the other room earlier was no part of his imagination. This was a troubled house and his coming had served only to kindle those things which had lain dormant. It remained for him to sit tight and take the one out that was left him while there was still a chance.

  The simple decision came as a welcome relief and he walked soft-footed alongside the veranda to the corner. He started to turn here, then stopped in the shadow of the railing when something white caught his eye down the slope ahead of him. There, outlined against the trees and close to the path leading to the beach, stood a man and woman in motionless embrace.

  At first glance he saw only the man, and when he was aware of the white trousers and dark coat, when he saw how tall the shadowed figure stood, he know it must be Mike Fabyan. Only then did he notice the white lines of the woman’s arms as they reached up to lock behind the man’s neck. That was all he saw of her in the seconds he stood there—the man’s back, the woman’s arms. When they remained that way he backed off and retraced his steps, refusing to speculate further or to analyze the flood of quick hot resentment that rose quickly inside him when he remembered that Fabyan and Alma had been missing earlier. He told himself it was none of his business. He stopped in the darkness and spent the next three minutes asking himself what the hell was the matter with him.

  When he was ready he moved slowly towards the rear of the house and along the walk. As he approached the entrance he heard voices and then Tenney and Fabyan appeared, the big man adjusting his cap. They did not see him and he waited where he was until Tenney’s small car drove off.

  The drawing-room was empty when he entered, its only illumination one floor lamp near the stairs. He glanced distastefully at the littered coffee-table as he passed it on the way to the telephone stand he had noticed in the hall; a moment later he was asking the operator if there was any telephone service to New York. When she replied in the affirmative he asked for the address of the local office, thanked her and hung up. Then, is he turned towards the stairs, someone called his name.

  He wheeled towards the voice, startled and uncertain, but the shadows were deep at the front of the room from which the call had come. He knew only that a woman had spoken until Kate Royce rose from a high-backed chair in the corner. She waited until he was close. She said:

  “I’ve been waiting for you. I hoped I’d catch you before you went to bed.”

  He said he was sorry he was so long and she said it did not matter. “I wanted to talk to you,” she added. “I thought we might go over to my place for a few minutes.”

  He bowed and followed her out along the veranda to the breezeway which led to her own small porch. Here she indicated a chair and turned another one to face it.

  “If you’d like a drink you’ll find something on the table.… No?” she said when he refused. “Perhaps before you go then.”

  He waited until she was seated, lowered himself into the chair. Then, before he could wonder what this was all about she came to the point.

  “I want to ask you a question,” she said. “Two questions, really.” She hesitated briefly and her voice betrayed no trace of agitation. In a quiet tone, with which she might have asked about his health, she said: “I’d like to know why you have come here posing as Johnny’s nephew. I’d also like you to tell me what happened to the real Jim MacQuade and where he is now.”

  5

  THE voice came to him as from a great distance. He heard the words distinctly nevertheless, and it surprised him some that he felt no great emotional shock. Out beyond the line of trees a pinpoint of light too low for a star marked the surface of the sea. He watched it a moment to see if it moved and when it did he knew it was a boat of some sort. A schooner, probably, on its way to St. Vincent or perhaps the Grenadines. Beside him Kate Royce sat unmoving and finally he turned to look at her, some impulse preventing him from so easily admitting her suspicions were correct.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not sure I heard you. Are you suggesting I’m not Jim MacQuade?”

  “I am indeed.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “In that case—”

  He did not finish the sentence. A sardonic chuckle rose in his throat and he choked it back. He asked himself how anyone could have failed quite so miserably in so short a time. How many hours had he been on the island? Eight, more or less.…

  “I know so because I’m a suspicious and often—what one might call—nosy old woman.”

  Also, he thought, a shrewd and intelligent one. “You use the word loosely,” he said aloud.

  Ignoring his comment, she said: “Johnny had a photograph taken of Jim MacQuade when he was here sixteen years ago. When he had his first stroke and his nephew chose to ignore it, Johnny tore the picture in half and threw it away. I don’t know why but I kept it. I looked at it closely this afternoon.”

  She leaned forward slightly. “I dare say you may bear some resemblance to the real Jim, perhaps in size and coloring, even in features. It would not particularly matter, I think, after all these years. Johnny is the only one here who ever saw his nephew and because this thing in his mind had become so important to him he was ready to accept almost any halfway presentable young man as that nephew. In any case you had evidence to corroborate
your impersonation.”

  “Ohh.” The word came slowly on an undertone of resentment. “You checked up while I was in swimming.”

  “I told you I was a snoop.” She paused. “I found the things that belonged to Jim MacQuade in your wallet: the birth certificate, the social security card.”

  “And you kept looking. Why?”

  “Because I didn’t think you were Jim MacQuade. You see, I’d read that one’s ears are almost as distinctive as one’s fingerprints. Yours have generous lobes. The boy in that photograph had almost none. I looked again after I met you on the porch and then—well, I had to be sure. I happen to be very fond of Johnny and I’ve known him a very long time.… Just what were your plans, Mr. Ward?” she said, her voice suddenly losing its studied calm. “Duncan Ward, isn’t it? … How is it you have Jim MacQuade’s birth certificate? Is he alive? What is he to you?”

  He got his feet under him and the scrape of his shoes sounded unnaturally loud on the concrete flooring. He could see a little more distinctly now and when he located the bottle and glasses on the table he stepped towards them. In the darkness his grin was warped as he accepted the fact that this was the end of the impersonation. As an impostor he was a colossal flop. Ahead he could see—at best—nothing but chagrin and embarrassment, but even as he acknowledged this, some of the pressure which had been harassing him ever since his arrival began to lift. Regardless of what might happen now he discovered that it was a relief to be Duncan Ward again, to forget the act and be himself.

  “I changed my mind about the drink,” he said. “Could I fix you one?”

  She refused and he sat down again. He took a big swallow and considered her questions.

  “Jim’s in a sanitarium outside of New York,” he said. “I talked to him—it seems like a week ago—yesterday afternoon.”

  “He’s a friend of yours?”

  “Probably the oldest one I have.”

  “He’s ill?”

  “You could call it that.”

  Silence came and made itself felt. Ward waited it out and presently the woman spoke.

  “I wish you’d tell me about him,” she said with the quiet cadence of a plea.

  “We were in high school together, that’s where it started, I guess. We went to Cornell as freshmen, deciding we would stick together, which was a break for me since he had more talent than I, more charm. We decided on a fraternity and when they gave him a bid he wouldn’t accept unless they took me. We were roommates. In the same outfit overseas and we were both wounded, Jim because he stayed behind to give me a hand. He got it much worse than I did and I think that’s what started him drinking, the lingering pain. A couple of years ago he was engaged to a girl who decided to marry someone else. The past year or so he’s been much worse.”

  “An alcoholic?”

  “In a way, yes. Not a steady drinker though. He’ll go along two or three months and you think he’s going to be okay and then he’ll be gone for days.”

  She moved in her chair and he saw she had settled back. She said: “And you knew about Johnny because you were so close to Jim.”

  “It seems as if I’d always known Johnny.” Ward put his glass on the floor and found a cigarette. “I used to be jealous of Jim and those letters and checks he’d get twice a year; it was the checks mostly, I guess. Jim would let me read the letters and sometimes I’d get him talking about the summer he spent here when he was a boy. Johnny became a real person to me. He appealed to my imagination because he’d done things I thought I’d like to do and knew I never would, even if I had the chance.”

  He offered a cigarette and she accepted. “Back there in high school all that seemed pretty important. Those letters conjured up thoughts of far places and high adventure, of the tropics and jungle rivers. In my mind John MacQuade was synonymous with prospecting for gold and diamonds and emeralds, a figure right out of Jack London or Rex Beach or Peter B. Kyne, even though at the time all that was in his past and he had already settled down here.”

  “And what did Jim think?”

  “Oh, he agreed with me.” He lit the cigarettes and watched the match burn down before he blew it out. “But since Johnny was his uncle he took him for granted. I think Jim was secretly pretty proud until that time in the early forties when Jim’s father needed money badly and Johnny wouldn’t loan it to him.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Kate Royce said. “I was here at the time. Johnny didn’t actually refuse but he wanted a personal note and that angered Jim’s father and he never wrote again.”

  “Anyway the father lost his business and Jim held it against Johnny. I’ve argued with Jim about it,” Ward said. “When Johnny had that first stroke I told Jim he should come down. He got sore and told me if it was so important why didn’t I come down instead. We were about the same size and build. Same color eyes and hair. We didn’t actually look alike but we had been taken as brothers. I guess that’s what gave me the idea the other day.”

  “Then it was your idea.”

  “I suppose so. Originally anyway.” He hesitated. “Jim was on one of his benders when the letter and check came. He was gone for five days and when they found him he was in pretty tough shape. His face was cut up and one leg was badly bruised, as if it had been run over by a car or been kicked repeatedly. I got him in this sanitarium and he was more or less comatose for three days. When I could I gave him the letter and he read it. As usual he was remorseful and he spoke some of really coming down here when he recovered. That was when I argued that it might be better if I came in his place as he had once suggested.”

  Kate was watching him through the darkness. He could feel her eyes upon him even though he could not actually see them. After a silent moment she prompted him.

  “Why?”

  Ward thought it over. It was all very clear in his mind, and in his imagination he could see each detail of the private room, the expression on his friend’s face, the lacerations that marred it. Yet to put all this in words, to explain his thoughts, was a hard thing to do. He said so. He said he wasn’t sure he could explain his feelings.

  “Try,” she said.

  “Well, I guess I was a little afraid. Because, as I said, John MacQuade had become a very real person. I probably endowed him with a lot of qualities he did not possess. I knew he loved Jim, that seeing him again must have become something of an obsession, otherwise he wouldn’t have continued to ask Jim to come down here. I knew he must have built up a picture in his mind just as I had unconsciously formed a picture of him, and I knew it would be a shock to him when he saw the real Jim.”

  He paused and said: “I mean Jim had changed a lot in the last couple of years. His hair had started to gray and he looked five years older than he was. He was thin and not at all strong. His color was bad and his nerves were shot. Given a month he might have looked presentable enough to be the man Johnny thought he was, but from the letter there was no way of telling how much longer Johnny’d be around.

  “Then too,” he said, “there was the idea that if Jim came down before it was too late there would be some inheritance. Jim had no idea it was like this. He remembered only a run-down plantation and house, and he’d scoffed at me before when I argued that even if he didn’t like his uncle he ought to make a play at it for what he might get out of it, if for no other reason. He never figured he’d get more than a few thousand and he wouldn’t be bothered, but now I wanted those few thousand for him. He hadn’t been able to hold a job in months—he’d worked up to a junior partnership in a good accounting firm—and there was no money for what he really needed: the chance to get away in the right sort of place for a long time.”

  Recalling the details of that last afternoon he said: “I think he was relieved when I told him what I had in mind. I think his conscience bothered him some about Johnny. He needed help now, but he was never the sort that would do a thing like that for money, and after all the years of ignoring his uncle he. didn’t want to face up to the meeting.” He put out hi
s cigarette, glanced again at Kate and she had not moved. “I had no such scruples. I knew enough of the background and the people involved to take a stab at the impersonation and I guess I thought if I could pull it off, if I could measure up to the sort of guy Jim used to be, it might be good for Johnny too. He’d get a tremendous kick out of having Jim come back and if I could act the part it would be just as good because Johnny’d never know. I intended to stay a week or so and insist that I had to get back for business reasons; that way Johnny’d have what he wanted with no harm done and Jim would benefit too. I guess it sounds sort of silly now.…”

  He paused and it came to him that his voice had thickened as he spoke. It made him uncomfortable because it seemed now that what he had said sounded sentimental and a little corny. He forced a short laugh and went on quickly.

  “Of course I had an angle too. The law business was a little dull and the March weather was getting me down, and here was a chance to get a nice vacation with all expenses paid. I guess I got sort of hipped on the idea.” He grunted softly, a deprecating sound. “I might have pulled it off at that,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for you.”

  He heard her chair scrape and glanced up. “I think I will have a drink,” she said. “Rather weak, please, and short.… Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  She accepted the glass and waited until he sat down. “Yes,” she said, “you most assuredly would have, as you say, pulled it off. And yet”—she leaned back again—“you must have had your doubts. I overheard you asking the operator about the overseas telephone.”

  “I decided I’d better call Jim tomorrow.”

  “Really?”

  He hesitated, wondering if he should tell her about the poison and the cat. In deciding against the idea he was influenced by Johnny’s own secrecy about the incident.

  “What else could I do?” He hesitated again, wondering how she could fail to understand the necessity of such a step. “Look, Miss Royce,” he said. “I came down here as an impostor because, rightly or wrongly, I thought I could do some good. I had no compunctions about perpetrating a fraud so long as it was a small one involving no more than a few thousand dollars. It’s different now. MacQuade must be worth a lot of money. Have you any idea how much?”