Hence he didn’t rise high in the pugilistic firmament; but nobody crossed his path in that lowly part of Harlem where he moved. His reputation was known, and his history of destruction was the more terrible because it was so impersonal. He proceeded in combat as methodically as a machine; was quite as effective when acting for someone else as when acting for himself, and in neither case did he ever exhibit any profound emotion. True, he had a light sense of humour. For example, he had once held an adversary’s head in the crook of his elbow and with his free hand torn one of the unfortunate fellow’s ears off. He was given to such little drolleries; they amused him much as it amuses a small boy to pull off the wings of a fly; but it was quite as impersonally innocent.
It is hardly accurate to say that Tiger walked along beside Bubber. He walked along above Bubber, looming ominously like a prodigious shadow, and fully as tenacious. He did so without effort, smoothly, taking approximately one step to Bubber’s three; he glided. Bubber bounced along hurriedly, explaining how he had allowed the time to get away from him and must rush but did not want to inconvenience his unexpected companion by so swift a pace. Tiger assured him that the pace was anything but exhausting.
It was about the hour at which his moonsign had appeared to him on the night before. ‘Wonder do you see yo’self when you dead?’ he asked himself. ‘Maybe the third one is me!’
‘Huh?’ inquired Tiger.
‘Nothin’. Jes’ thinkin’ out loud.’
It was a mistake that he did not make again. But what he thought further, as the two progressed southward along Harlem’s Fifth Avenue, was evident from what he presently did.
‘I ain’t got but one chance to shake this boogy loose. That’s ’cause he don’t know that I know what he’s aimin’ to do. He didn’t see Red come in the card-room and tell me the bad news. So the thing to do is surprise him; got to stay here on the Avenue till I get a chance to duck around a corner and run like hell up a side street. By the time he realize’ what I’ve done, not expectin’ me to know nothin’, I’ll have a start on him. When he look he won’t see nothin’ but the soles o’ my feet. I’ll be runnin’ so fas’ he’ll think I’m layin’ down.—But what’s the use runnin’ if I ain’ got no place to run to? Lemme see. Hot damn—I got it! The doctor—right in the next street. I was goin’ to see him anyhow, see if he could tell me how to help Jinx. Now I got to see him. Feet, get ready. And fo’ Gawd’s sake keep out o’ each other’s way!’
They crossed 130th Street. As they mounted the far curb and would have passed the building line, suddenly Bubber pointed in astonishment. ‘Good-night! Look a yonder! Done been a accident!’ And as Tiger Shade innocently peered ahead, the trickster did a right turn, snatched off his hat, and flew.
He had estimated Tiger’s reaction correctly. Tiger even walked on past the building line before he realized that he was alone, and Bubber was at the physician’s stoop before Tiger’s pursuit got under way.
The front door was at that moment opening to let out a patient who had come to see the doctor and found him out. The patient was in a bad humour. He needed treatment for certain scratches, abrasions, and bruises which his physiognomy had sustained before he had been able to subdue a violent wife. The wife had taken it upon herself to follow a certain private detective to a certain private residence the night before, and had come thus to discover her husband in an unexplainably trouserless state. The misunderstanding which had arisen then had waxed into an energetic physical encounter this morning; and though the lady had been duly subdued, she had, so to speak, made her mark first. Further the patient’s present ill humour had been increased by the difficulty of getting a physician on a Sunday evening. Dr Archer had been his fifth unsuccessful attempt, and he emerged from the hallway, where a housekeeper had told him the doctor was out for the evening, in a state of repressed, scowling rage which was the more rancorous because it was facially painful to scowl. Indeed he was at the moment praying to high heaven that the blippety-blipped so-and-so that got him in the jam in the first place be delivered into his hands just for sixty seconds.
It was therefore not coincidence but the efficacy of honest prayer which brought Bubber bounding up the stoop just as the large, disappointed gentleman turned to descend. There was just enough light before the door closed for each to recognize the other. And it might have inspired a new philosophy of the organism had some competent observer been there to see how so utterly different emotions in so utterly dissimilar men produced so completely identical reactions: malicious glee on the gentleman’s part, consternation on Bubber’s, but abrupt and total immobility in both cases. Before action could relieve that mutual paralysis, Tiger Shade was at hand.
At such moments, imbecility becomes genius. Bubber, accordingly, became a superman. ‘Come on, boy!’ he shouted to the leaping Tiger. ‘Here he is—this the guy I was chasin’! He grabbed my money at the corner and run! Come on, let’s get ’im!’ Whereupon he lunged upward and tackled the dumbfounded husband about the knees. Tiger, whose real interest lay in recovering the money, of which he was to receive part, hesitated now but a moment; swept up the stairs and lay hold of the accused, whom Bubber promptly released below. When Doctor Archer’s housekeeper opened the door again to see what the sudden rumpus was about, her astonished eyes beheld two heavyweights engaged in a wrestling match. It ended as she watched.
‘Hand it over,’ she heard the victor, sitting astride the other, advise.
‘I ain’t been near no corner!’ panted the uncomfortable underling. ‘I’m after that tubby runt, too! Where’d he go? Lemme up! Which a way’d he go?’
‘Get off my stoop, you hoodlums,’ cried the outraged housekeeper, ‘else I’ll call the police. Go on now! Get off o’ my stoop!’
Her admonitions were unnecessary. Bubber’s absence was sufficient evidence of his stratagem. Tiger desisted, whipping about just in time to see the elusive Bubber enter the house directly opposite across the street and carefully close the door behind him.
‘There he goes!’ exclaimed he. ‘Come on—let’s get him!’
Across the street they sped, scuffled up the brownstone stoop and burst through the door. Tiger, who was first, glanced up the stairs, which the fugitive could not possibly yet have traversed.
‘He’s down here some place—on this floor. Let’s look. Come on.’
His new ally hesitated.
‘Say—you know what this is?’
‘What?’
‘This place is a undertaker’s parlour!’
‘I don’t care if it’s a undertaker’s bathroom, I’m goin’ in here and look for that boogy. He can’t pull no fast one on me like that.’
They found Undertaker Crouch’s rooms invitingly accessible and apparently quite empty. They went into the parlour and stopped. There was a faint funeral fragrance in the air, and a strange, unnatural quiet over all that immediately subdued their movements to cautious tiptoeing and their voices to low muttering.
‘I ain’ crazy ’bout lookin’ for nobody in here,’ announced the husband.
‘Aw, what you scared o’?’ the Tiger reassured him. ‘Dead folks ain’ no trouble.’
‘They ain’ no trouble to me—I don’t get that close to ’em.’
‘Well—you don’t see none do you?’
‘I ain’ looked. First one I see, I bids you both good-evenin’.’
‘I thought you wanted some o’ this guy?’
‘Some of him? In a place like this, I couldn’t use two of him. My mind wouldn’t be on what I was doin’.’
‘Well, I’m go’n’ get ’im tonight. He’s got eighty bucks o’ my buddy’s dough. If he gives me the slip tonight, them bucks is long gone.’
‘And if I hear any funny noises, I’m long gone.’
‘Come on. Let’s look back yonder.’
‘Go ahead—I’ll wait for you.’
‘He’s tricky—it’ll take both of us to find ’im.’
‘O.K. I’m behind you. But I ain’t lettin’
nothin’ get ’tween me and the door.’
‘Did you leave it open?’
‘I sho’ did.’
But the words were no sooner out of his mouth than the door was heard to swing gently shut.
‘The wind,’ explained Tiger Shade.
‘Oh, yea?’
‘What else could it be?’
‘The Spirit of St Louis for all I know.’
‘Come on.’
‘What you waitin’ for?’
‘Come on.’
‘O.K. Start out. If you turn round and don’t see me you’ll know I jes’ lost my enthusiasm.’
None too eagerly, Tiger started out, followed by his reluctantally. Several tubbed palms stood supercilious and motionless along the walls, and these the two searchers eyed distrustfully as they passed. They reached the wide doorway of the rear room without noting any evidence of their quarry. The rear room was dark save for what shadowy illumination reached it from the dim light of the parlour. Close together, the husband peering around the more venturesome Tiger, their wide eyes trying vainly to discern the contents of the room, they halted on the threshold.
It occurred to both of them to feel for a switch-button on the wall beside the door, and still eyeing the shadows they simultaneously felt. Contact with an open live wire could have given either no greater shock than he got at this unexpected contact with a hand. For one palsied moment their fingers stuck together as if to an electrified object which, once grasped, could not be released. Then the husband snatched his hand away, wheeled and took the first stride in flight. Only the first. The Tiger, having wheeled also, was so close behind him as to be able to grab him from behind, and his comrade, not knowing what held him, gave a hoarse moan, slipped on the polished hardwood floor, and sprawled.
‘Hey you dumbbell,’ muttered Tiger, recovered and master of himself again, but still noticeably dyspnœic. ‘That was only me. Come on—snap out of this monkey-business.’
‘I felt a human hand!’ the other whispered getting up sheepishly.
‘Well, don’t I look human?’
‘Was it you? Huh—well—yea, you look human all right. But if you grab hold o’ me the next time I start to run, you won’t look human no mo’. You’ll look like you been ridin’ a wild steer.’
‘Come on. That guy is hidin’ in there.’
‘Somehow I done los’ interest in that guy.’
At this moment a curious sound rose to their ears.
‘What’s that?’
It was startlingly close—a distinct chorus of voices singing. Even the words of the song were easily distinguishable:
‘Am I born to die?
Oh, am I born to die?
Lord, am I born to die—
To lay this body down?’
‘What kind o’ house is this?’
Tiger’s wealth of reassurance was rapidly being exhausted. ‘Can’t you think o’ none o’ the answers? That’s somebody’s radio.’
‘One of these mornings bright and fair,
Lay this body down—
Going to take my wings and try the air,
Lay this body down—
Lord am I born to die?’
‘No radio never sounded like that. Them’s sho’ ’nough voices and they’s in this house.’
‘Oh, am I born to die
To lay this body down?’
‘Not me!’
‘Listen,’ said Tiger. ‘That’s only a radio. Let’s give this place one mo’ look. He got to be in there. If he can go in there, so can we.’
‘All right. But no holdin’ in the clinches.’
Again, in the closest possible formation and in utter silence, they advanced to the rear room door.
‘Whyn’t you feel for the light ag’in?’
‘Wait. I’ll strike a match.’ The Tiger did so with none too steady fingers. By its fluttering, feeble, yellow flare two pairs of dilated eyes surveyed what could be seen of the room—a large desk on the right in the far corner, two windows in the back wall, a chair or two, and—
‘Lawd have mercy—look a yonder!’
But the Tiger had needed no such admonition—he was looking with one hundred percent of his eyesight. Along the left wall stretched a long table, upon which, covered with a sheet, lay an unmistakably human form.
The match went out.
The pair stood momentarily cataleptic, their eyes fixed on the body which, once seen, remained now vaguely but positively visible even in the shadows. Before their shock passed a mysterious thing, an awful thing, began to happen, holding them fast in a horrified moment of fascination: slowly the white form moved in the shadow, seemed to change shape, to lift and widen like vapour. At the moment when their very eyeballs seemed about to burst, singing voices came again with that disturbing query:
‘Am I born to die?’
Their spastic paralysis broke into convulsions of activity.
‘Not here!’ gasped the husband. And this time Tiger Shade did not overtake him till they both hit the sidewalk at the base of the front stoop and headed in opposite directions for more light.
Bubber, sitting fully erect now on the side of the table, cast the sheet aside and stood up with a sigh of relief. ‘Frimbo ain’t got a thing on me,’ said he. ‘If that ain’t risin’ from the dead, what is it?’
But the chorus of the singing was disturbing him as much as it had his pursuers. While allowing the latter time to retreat to a safe distance he decided to investigate the former. ‘Might as well find out all I can ’bout this morgue. Which a way—?’
He listened. He moved toward the door which led from the room directly into the back of the first-floor balcony. At the head of the stairs leading down to the basement he saw light below, and realized that the sound was coming from that direction. The singing had stopped. Just over his head, in the flight above, soft footsteps were distinctly audible. He waited, listening. Presently the front door clicked shut.
‘Wonder if that was that flunky goin’ out?’
It was too late to attempt to follow, however, and so he pursued his present investigation. The singing had stopped. Bubber went on down the stairs as noiselessly as he could. In the hall below, which corresponded to its fellows above, he paused and listened again. The light he had seen came from a door which was only partly open; the prowler could not see around it without going too close. But he heard significant sounds:
‘Is they anybody heah,’ a deep evangelic voice was saying, ‘what don’t expect to shake my hand up in glory?’
‘No!’ shouted a number of voices.
‘The spirit of the Lord has been in this place tonight!’
‘Yes!’ avowed the chorus.
‘Did you feel it?’
‘Yes!’
‘Did it stir yo’ soul?’
‘Yes, Jesus!’
‘Move you to do good deeds?’
‘Yes, indeed. Amen, brother!’
‘Aw right then. Now let’s take up the collection.’
Silence, abrupt and unanimous.
Bubber grinned in the hall outside. ‘Church meetin’—and ’bout to break up.’
He was right. Some of the members of the little group that evidently used Crouch’s meeting-room Sundays were already shamelessly heading for the hall door, en route to the freer manifestations of divine presence out of doors. Bubber retreated to the rear of the hall so as to attract no attention, and found himself at the head of the cellar stairs. It occurred to him that his tour of inspection might as well include the cellar, especially since that would allow the occupants of the meeting-room time to take up their collection and depart. Then he could return and investigate the basement floor.
He had procured at a drugstore during his wanderings today, an inexpensive pocket flashlight in imitation of the physician and detective who had found such devices so useful last night. This he now produced and by its light started down the cellar stairs. He had to proceed cautiously for this staircase was not so firmly constructed as those
above; but he was soon in the furnace-room below the sidewalk level, and his small pencil of light traced the objects which his predecessors had observed the night before: the furnace, the coal bin, the nondescript junk about the floor, the pile of trunks, boxes, and barrels up front. He saw the central droplight but could not turn it on, since its switch was at the head of the stairs he had already passed.
And so he moved inquisitively forward toward the pile of objects up front. A few minutes of nosing about revealed nothing exciting, and he became conscious that the sounds of shuffling feet overhead had stopped.
He was about to abandon the cellar, whose chilly dampness was beginning to penetrate, when, without sound or warning, the centre droplight went on. Feeble as it was, its effect was startling in the extreme, and Bubber felt for the moment trapped and helpless. He recovered his wits enough to crouch down among the shadows of the objects around him, and slowly came to realize that no one else was in the place. He awaited a footfall on the staircase. None came. At the moment when curiosity would have overcome better judgment, he heard a sound which came from beyond the stairs, toward the distant back wall. Cautiously looking around the corner of a packing case, he saw a figure emerge from the dimness. The figure approached the foot of the stairs, and Bubber saw that it was Frimbo, bareheaded, clad in a black dressing-gown. Frimbo carefully and silently went up the stairs; there was the sound of a bolt sliding; then Frimbo came down again.
Fortunately Bubber’s protection was now nothing so unstable as an outspread wardrobe trunk, for he was quite unmindful of anything but the strange man’s movements. And curious enough they were. Frimbo grew dim again in the shadow, then reemerged with a paper bundle in his arms. He laid this down several feet from, and in front of the furnace, which was against the left wall and facing toward the centre. The bundle thus rested almost directly beneath the droplight, and Bubber could see that its paper wrapping had a greasy appearance, as if its contents had been dripping with oil. Frimbo went to the furnace door and flung it wide. The red of the bright coals touched his awesome face to a glow, contrasting oddly with the yellow light behind him. He seized a long-handled shovel standing beside the furnace and returning, lifted the bundle upon it, reapproached the open door and thrust the thing in. The ignition of the package was instantaneous, the flames from it belching out of the aperture before Frimbo closed it. Now he replaced the shovel, went up the stairs again, unbolted the door at the top, came down, and disappeared in the darkness at the rear. There was a soft sound like the one that had heralded Frimbo’s appearance, and a moment later the centre light went out.
The Conjure-Man Dies Page 19