Long Live the Dead

by Hugh B. Cave

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Matter of Morals

  In case you are one of those who saw my name and picture in the papers about two months ago, and sadistically added your scornful voice to the weight of public opinion that put the skids under me, let me put you straight on a thing or two.

  First of all, I’m not lecherous. That was a word applied to me in the Tribune, by some hop-head who probably came across it while thumbing the pages of a dictionary. I can’t be called a respectable married man, I’ll admit, because I’m not and never have been married. But unless I’m a somnambulist and do strange things in my sleep, I’ve never, to my knowledge, gone out of my way to make passes at young ladies on street corners.

  They know this down at Headquarters.The commissioner knows it, too. But what they know and what they have to do to please the public—meaning you and you and you—are two different things.

  The truth is, I was driving to Bayview at the time, to have another talk with Jerry Simms, the smart young Bayview cop who first smelled the stench of this blackmail business. Jerry had phoned to say he had uncovered still another victim of the squeeze, and if I’d come up there he would introduce me to the fellow—a break for me, it seemed, because after six weeks of tiresome plugging on the case I had got practically nowhere.

  It was a nasty night.The roads were still lumpy and treacherous with the remains of last week’s blizzard, and the rain was so heavy you couldn’t see ten feet in front of the windshield.

  So when the girl flagged me, just this side of the state line, I stopped to give her a lift.

  Maybe that’s being lecherous. I wouldn’t know. All I know is that the poor kid looked drenched and frozen, and she thumbed me for a lift, and on that kind of night I’d have gone out of my way to pick up Frankenstein’s monster.

  She climbed into the car and I asked her where she was going. Bayview, she said, when her teeth stopped chattering. We talked about the weather, as one does, and I guessed she was about nineteen or twenty—a sweet young thing and probably pretty, though for all I could see, under the enormous coat she was wearing she might be as fat as your Aunt Emma.

  About half a mile over the state line, when we stopped for a red light at the Four Corners, she staged her act.

  It stunned me, and I’m a city dick who has seen a lot of phoney business in my day. There we were, waiting for the light to turn green. A rotary traffic circle confronted us, and on both sides of us were big gas stations, brilliantly lit-up in the downpour. And she began screaming.

  She turned on me like a crazy person and began clawing at me. She had nails for clawing, too. They raked my face and drew blood, ripped my collar, damn near tore my tie off, and pulled a couple of buttons off my coat.

  She got the door open, but she didn’t get out right away—she kept clawing at me, and screaming for help.

  That sort of thing would draw attention anywhere, and my sweet companion had picked a spot where there was an abundance of attention handy. A couple of fellows tore over from the nearest gas station, just as she shoved herself clear of me and sprawled out over the running-board. They laid hold of me.

  You know the rest, if you read the papers: Cardin fought viciously to escape—Get that? To “escape”—but was overpowered by men who rushed to the young woman’s assistance. The girl herself managed to stumble across the highway to a gasoline station, where she hysterically sobbed out her story of what had happened.

  Her story. It was a beauty. I, Jeff Cardin, had offered her a ride to Bayview, and though she was not the sort of girl to accept such offers from strangers, she had welcomed the offer this time because of the weather. She had been on her way to visit friends in Bayview, and I had—looked like a decent, respectable sort of man—and so forth.

  Probably I had been drinking. At any rate, after leading off with a most embarrassing line of talk, I had attempted to force my attentions upon her, and when repulsed had grown violently angry. Then I had assaulted her.

  She didn’t endeavor to explain why I had picked the Four Corners, of all places, to do my assaulting. That was a minor point that Percy P. Public, meaning you and you and you, overlooked. You were more interested in devouring the descriptions of her disheveled clothing, and of how Jeff Cardin, The Beast, was given a thorough going-over by the lads from the gas station, which served him right.

  And no doubt you thought her little speech to the police a generous and beautiful thing when she said angelically: “I do not wish to take this man into court and be the means of costing him his job. No doubt he had been drinking and was not himself. He has learned his lesson. I want to drop the whole thing and forget it.” Nice of her. But if any of you had taken the trouble to go deeper into the matter—to check, for instance, on the young lady’s name—you might have shouted less vehemently for Jeff Cardin’s hide. Mary Anderson, she said her name was. From out of town, way out of town—Wheeling, West Virginia. Living in a respectable rooming house on Norton Street, and looking for a job.

  We checked all that, and it was phoney. No Mary Anderson had ever been known at the Wheeling address she gave us. And as for the Norton Street rooming house, she had resided there just four days, and was listed among the alumni when a couple of the boys went down, the day after the fracas, to ask her a few more pertinent questions.

  In short, she pulled her little stunt and then flew the coop. But public indignation is a peculiar thing. Once aroused, it goes thundering along like a steamroller, and is as difficult to stop as a bull elephant with a bad temper.

  Most of you didn’t read the follow-ups in the papers. Most of the papers, for that matter, didn’t lean very far over backward to print them, there being sensational war news on the front pages at the time. So, with an ear to the ground and an eye on the political horizon, the commissioner sent for me.

  A fine man, the commissioner. Oh yes. The papers tell you so, and the papers never play politics. Oh my, no! We should all be thankful for having such an upright man at the head of our police department.

  He fired a cigar and folded his hands over the balloon he calls a stomach. He cleared his throat. “Er—Cardin,” he said to me.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Er—about this business in the papers, Cardin. They’ve made a lot of it. It’s ridiculous, of course. We on the inside know that the whole thing was a put-up job. But—er—public opinion has to be handled with kid gloves, Cardin.”

  I said: “I’m going to get that girl, commissioner, and when the papers print my picture again, the musical accompaniment will be in a different key.”

  He cleared his throat. “Er—quite right, Cardin. Quite right, of course. But for the present—that is to say—you know, with elections in the offing—I suggest a short vacation.”

  I said: “The quickest way to get rid of a bad smell, commissioner, is to throw open the windows. I don’t want any vacation. I want to clear this up.”

  “Later, Cardin,” he said.

  “But it’s my reputation you’re sending on a vacation! I’ve been a dick for ten years, commissioner. My rep is clean. I can’t let this thing drag on!”

  “I’m sorry, Cardin,” he said, frowning at his cigar, “but I advise a vacation.” He cleared his throat for the third time. “The—er—the papers will call it a suspension, of course, but we on the inside will know what it really is, and that’s all that matters. I know best, Cardin.”

  “This,” I said, “is final?”

  “That’s right, Cardin.”

  “Well,” I said, on my feet and glaring at him, my temper climbing like the mercury in a hot thermometer, “it isn’t. You’re not throwing Jeff Cardin to the wolves, not for politics or any other cheap reason!”

  “Now, now, Cardin,” he said. “There are times when—”

  “There are times when the stink in this department is more than a decent man can stand!” I snarled. “My resignation goes into effect right now. Good-day to you, commissioner, and to hell with you!”

  I wal
ked out.

  They didn’t call it a resignation in the papers. They informed the general public, meaning you and you, that Detective Cardin had been relieved of further duty with the police department. The commissioner, sore with me, spread a layer of smelly ointment to the effect that the department must at all cost be kept free of any smudge of suspicion. “We have one of the finest police departments in the world,” he wrote. “Nothing ever has tarnished, or ever will be permitted to tarnish, its splendid reputation.”

  “It serves him right, the heel,” said you and you and you. Now you know the truth.

  I didn’t expect any business, except perhaps some shady business, until the hue and cry died down. The thought occurred to me that maybe I should change the name, shedding my now odorous reputation along with it, but something else in me rebelled, and I’d be damned if I would.

  So there it was on the door of my dingy office on the eighth floor of the Baker Building—JEFF CARDIN, INVESTIGATIONS. And there I was, cooling my heels and nursing my hate.

  With only a paltry hundred dollars to my name, I couldn’t very well go combing the country for Mary Anderson, much as I wanted to, and I’d already exhausted all local leads that pointed even a flimsy finger in her direction. So that would have to wait.

  My first visitor was a charming little old lady who wanted to know if this was the eighth floor or the ninth. I told her it was the eighth. She looked annoyed and asked where the stairs were. I walked her down to the elevators, put her on a car, received a nice “Thank you, young man,” for my trouble and went back to my brooding.

  My second was a loud-mouthed egg peddling something. He stayed twelve seconds.

  My third, fourth, fifth and sixth were the same.

  My seventh—a client.

  He was a good-looking chap, well-dressed, perfectly at ease. I thought he was a college boy until he sat down and gave me a chance to look at his face—then I saw that he was older. Not much older, but older. His name, he said matterof-factly, was Standish. Edgar Standish. “I’ve not stolen anything or murdered anyone,” he said with a pleasant smile, “so I don’t suppose you’ve heard of me, Lieutenant.”

  I said darkly: “Why the ‘Lieutenant’?”

  “You are, aren’t you?”

  “I was.”

  “I don’t believe all I read in the papers,” he shrugged. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”

  I sort of liked him.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “if I believed that hokum about your lecherous nature, I’d be the last man in the world to come here. Because, you see, I want you to take care of a young lady for me. At least, to keep an eye on her.”

  So it was one of those things. But it wasn’t.

  “I live out of town a little distance,” he said, “in Green Hill. I’m married—have a youngster, in fact—and the young lady in question, Miss Grace Marvin, is a guest of ours. Not a very willing guest, I’m afraid,” he added, shaking his head.

  I paid attention.

  “She has been ill, Lieutenant, and is mentally not just right. Encephalitis sometimes does that, you know—leaves the patient somewhat unbalanced. Miss Marvin isn’t at all dangerous, you understand. In fact, most of the time she is quite normal. But at times she suffers from the delusion that she’s being held prisoner.”

  “Is she?” I asked.

  “Frankly, yes, until her doctor feels safe in giving her free rein. The situation is somewhat peculiar, in that the girl’s folks are in Europe somewhere, and she must either stay with us or go to a nursing-home. Doctor Truett is convinced that the atmosphere of a nursing-home would do her more harm than good. We like her and want to do all we can to help her, but frankly, Lieutenant, she’s quite a problem.”

  “And you want me to play watchdog?”

  “That’s right.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as necessary. When the girl’s parents return, she can go to them, of course. But so far we’ve had no luck in trying to make contact with them. This war, you know.”

  “Well,” I said, matching his frankness with some of my own, “I could use the job.”

  He seemed pleased and grateful, gave me a check for one hundred dollars and said he would stop at my apartment, on his way home from work, to pick me up. When he’d gone, I went down to the third floor, to the office of the building-superintendent, and paid my rent.

  I had plenty of time that afternoon to look up the past and present of my client, but the job was not an easy one The Green Hill directory, or rather the directory of the town of Greenwood, of which Green Hill is a handsome suburb, listed him as a home-owner, all right, and from the same source I learned that his wife’s name was Caroline.

  The telephone book listed both a home and office phone, the former in Green Hill, which checked, and the latter at 32 Waverley Building, downtown. He was an architect.

  If you know a man’s profession and are trained in the business of snooping, you can generally get a pretty good line on him. The line on Edgar Standish made him thirty-four years old, a graduate of M. I. T. and the son of a former Tech professor. It’s nice to know these things.

  I was ready at five fifteen and he was there on the dot. We drove out to Green Hill.

  He had quite a place, even for Green Hill. The road climbed a bluff and Standish’s house was at the top of it, overlooking the colony of expensive residences on one side, the bay on the other. The air was different out here. There was a stiff, clean breeze that appeared to be permanently a part of the location. The sea looked cold and gray, and the cliff fell into it with an abruptness calculated to make timid men steer clear of the brink. The house itself was a modern affair surrounded by lawn and gardens.

  He introduced me to his wife, and I was impressed. My opinion of the other sex had been lower than the commissioner’s conscience since my set-to with Miss Mary Anderson, but now it took an upward turn. Caroline Standish gave me an honest hand and hoped I would make myself quite at home. “I’m afraid,” she said with a smile, “you’ll just have to make yourself one of the family. We have no servants except Mrs. Meade, the housekeeper, and it’s every man for himself down here.”

  She was slim and pretty, with honest blue eyes. I liked her.

  Standish himself toted my bag upstairs and showed me my room, and while I was wrestling into a clean shirt a little while later, I heard the youngster cutting up. He came tearing up the stairs, charged into my room, stared at me and said: “Hi!” A cute little guy about four years old, with his mother’s blond hair.

  “Hi, yourself,” I said.

  He said: “You’re an old friend of Daddy’s, aren’t you? You’re going to live with us for a while?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll have lots of fun,” he declared.

  He was right—but not the way he meant.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Footfalls After Midnight

  At dinner I met Mrs. Meade, a comfortably plump woman on the verge of fifty, and was introduced to the strange cause of my being there—Grace Marvin.

  She surprised me. Friends of genteel people are usually genteel themselves, and this girl wasn’t, or at least didn’t give that impression. She wore bright yellow slacks and a form-fitting sweater. Her mouth was reddened to look larger and more sensual than it was, her thick black hair was rakishly drawn back and bound with a red handkerchief, and the shadows that made her eyes so dark and wistful were as phoney as bootleg bond.

  Standish introduced me as a very old friend of his, and the girl cooed: “How very nice!” That kind of goo, from her, was like Traumerei from a danceband fiddle.

  I pigeonholed these first impressions, though, for future study and alterations. First impressions can be treacherous.

  We spent a quiet evening, played bridge for a while and quit to listen to a symphony concert on the radio. I like that sort of thing myself. Maybe it’s old age creeping in, but my fondness for jazz went winging when the boogie-woogie boys began to slug
out the sub-dominants. Miss Marvin, however, was plainly bored.

  “Give me,” she said, “Benny Goodman any time.”

  She excused herself with a yawn and went up to bed, giving the Standishes a chance to talk to me.

  “Well,” Edgar said, “what do you think of her?”

  “Seems perfectly normal to me,” I declared.

  “She is, tonight. That doesn’t mean she will be an hour from now.” He gave me a peculiar stare. “I’m afraid you won’t get much sleep around here, Lieutenant.”

  “You mean she prowls at night?”

  “We never know when she’ll act up. That’s what makes it so difficult.”

  I shrugged. “It won’t be the first time I’ve survived on catnaps. Ten years of being a cop, and you’re—” I didn’t finish it. It wasn’t important anyway. What was important was a furtive footfall over my head.

  I looked up. The room above that end of the living-room was the bedchamber assigned to me. I got out of my chair and toed into the hall, stopped with one hand on the stair-rail.

  It was dark up there. I shed my shoes and went up as quietly as was humanly possible. They were good stairs and they didn’t creak, which is something when a man weighs close to two hundred pounds.

  The door of my room was closed. I’d closed it myself, before going down to dinner. I steadied myself outside it, listening for more of those furtive footfalls. I put a hand on the knob, turned it slowly and straight-armed the door open.

  A voice in the darkness of the corridor, not ten feet from me, lifted me out of my socks by saying sweetly: “You don’t have to be that quiet, Lieutenant. He’s awake anyway.”

  There she was, just her face and hands visible in the dark. I blinked at her, feeling like a ten-year-old caught in the act of swiping cookies. I fumbled the light on and she came toward me from the door of the youngster’s room, those too-red lips mocking me with a smile.

  She was quite a girl in that snaky black negligee. Quite a girl.

  “I thought he was crying,” she said, “but he isn’t. Just gurgling to himself.” The odor of her perfume hung like a mist in the hall as she glided by me. “Good night, Lieutenant.”