Long Live the Dead

by Hugh B. Cave

  Compared with the vacuum that met this statement, the previous silence had been an Independence Day celebration.

  “The trouble was,” I said, “Josie left in a hurry and took with her the letters. And the good doctor absolutely refused to play ball until the letters had been produced.”

  The good doctor’s hands were wet with perspiration. “Well,” I said, “the letters arrived this morning. I’m turning them over to the commissioner.”

  That did it. For one long moment Truett looked like a man watching the removal of his own appendix. Then he shuddered, shut his eyes and put his hands up to his face. And I knew the doctor was finished.

  “What’s Miss Marvin’s real name, Doctor?” I asked him. “Marge what?”

  “Margery,” he said. His voice belonged in one of those midnight radio dramas. “Margery Knott. She—used to be my nurse.”

  This was something.

  “Is there a ghost of a chance, Doctor,” I asked, hunching myself forward, “that the victims of this gang were all patients of yours?”

  He nodded, refusing to look at me.

  “Margery Knott had access to your files?”

  He nodded again.

  It’s really wonderful, how simple these things are—after you’ve solved them. For weeks I had tried in vain to find something that would tie those blackmail victims together, but blackmail is the meanest racket in the world to uncover, because those who get snared by it are never eager to talk. They prefer to pay up and shut up.

  “Well, Doctor?” I said.

  He thought I knew. He said helplessly, with a shuddering glance at those around him: “I made the mistake years ago, and she found out about it while she was working for me. She found the letters. God knows I should have destroyed them, but I hadn’t. She took them. Later on, I learned that she and her colleagues were blackmailing some of my patients. I tried to put a stop to it, but she had those letters to hold over my head. Then …”

  “Then?” Grayson said, taking over.

  “I suddenly realized that I had a hold over her, too. About six months ago, before any of this happened, she brought her brother to me—her brother Nick. Her brother was in a bad way that night. He told me he had been mixed up in a drunken brawl. I removed a bullet from his leg. There was nothing in the newspapers the following day about a drunken brawl, but there was an account of the wounding of a policeman in a gunbattle. I—I suppose I should have reported Nick’s wounds, but Miss Knott begged me not to, and I was quite fond of her at that time, and …” He sobbed a little. “It hardly matters now, does it?”

  This was beginning to have angles. There were a couple of questions I wanted, to ask, but Truett went on with his recital.

  “I kept that bullet,” he said. “Later, when she threatened me with the letters, I was able to fight back. I told her I would turn the bullet over to the police, with a statement concerning it, unless she handed over my letters. But she didn’t have

  the letters.”

  “Josie had them,” I said.

  He nodded. “So I forced Miss Knott to come here to the Standishes until the letters could be turned over to me. It seemed the best way to keep an eye on her. I lied to the Standishes about her and brought her here, and told her that if she attempted to leave, I would go straight to the police. You see, we—we were playing a kind of game of blind man’s buff,” he explained eagerly.

  Grayson said darkly through a scowl: “This is all very ducky, isn’t it?” Glaring at me, he added: “Where do you fit?”

  “Standish hired me,” I said. “He thought the girl was really goofy and needed watching.”

  “Standish hired you. Now isn’t that a coincidence, him hiring you of all people?”

  “Think what you like,” I said. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t such an astounding coincidence, when you stopped to analyze it. Men like Edgar Standish are not usually chummy with a horde of private detectives. Needing one, they wouldn’t know where to turn. My name had been smeared all over the front pages. If you wanted a private dick and the papers told you you could pick up an ex-cop cheap, what do you think you would do?

  “Well,” Grayson growled, still eyeing me, “you were yelling murder a while ago. What about it?

  “Truett pushed her,” I said.

  The doctor began to cry. And I almost felt sorry for him.

  “These gloves,” I said, carefully removing them from my pocket, “came out of the compartment in his car. They’re dirty because he used then to wipe up his footprints.”

  We all looked at Truett. He came out of his trance, began shaking his head like a ventriloquist’s dummy and said rapidly: “No. No, I didn’t. She was standing there and I came up behind her and she was startled when I spoke to her. I didn’t push her. I had no idea of pushing her. She was startled. She didn’t know anyone was there and when I spoke, she was frightened. She slipped.” He stood up. Every inch of the man’s body was shaking. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll show you.” With quick, mincing steps he went across the room to a window. We watched him. It was a French window and a big one. Truett opened it. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll show you. She was standing there at the edge and—”

  Then he leaped.

  It was a fool thing to do. Even if he had landed on his feet, in full flight, there’d have been a broad lawn in front of him, then the stone wall to hurdle, then nowhere to go except down the road. He didn’t land on his feet, though. He stumbled, lost his balance, and went to his knees.

  Someone began shooting.

  The good doctor staggered to his feet and clutched at his chest. He screamed. His legs turned to rubber and he fell, but he was finished before he fell, and the last two bullets of the assassin were not needed. Truett collapsed, his toes tapping the turf, and I looked past him and saw his murderer.

  The fellow was in full flight behind the stone wall, racing as fast as his legs would carry him, toward the road.

  Grayson, though a heel, was a first-class shot. He fired twice, and the fleeing man folded.

  We walked over. It was Nick. I dropped to one knee beside him, put my hands on his shoulders and was staring into his face when he opened his eyes. I said gently: “You’re in for it now, chum.”

  He could take it, that boy. He’d been hit where there was no getting over it—the red stain spreading into view on his shirt was directly under his heart. But he made a fist of one hand and weakly aimed it at my face, and the blow actually hurt.

  “I have a date with Josie,” I said “and Boston is a pretty big town. You could save me some trouble by telling me where to

  find her.”

  “You go to hell,” he snarled.

  “This wouldn’t have happened,” I told him, “if Josie had been on the level with you.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t send those letters, chum. No doubt she figured they were much too valuable to be wasted on you and your sister. Your little stunt in the post office was unnecessary. The box was empty.”

  His lips curled and he whispered an unprintable epithet.

  “All for nothing,” I said, “you killed Truett. You might as well tell me. Where do I find her, chum?”

  “Peterboro Street,” he snarled. “She has an apartment. Mildred Blainey is the name … the name she’s using. Peterboro Street …” His lip formed the number.

  He died while we were toting him to the house.

  Grayson put his chin out at me. “I don’t get this,” he said darkly. “Why’d this guy kill the doctor?”

  I said: “He thought I had those letters. He figured the game was up and Truett’s next move would be to turn that bullet over to the police; in retaliation.”

  “What do you mean, he thought you had the letters?”

  “I haven’t them.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a funny thing,” I said,“but here we are, with most of this mess cleared up, and I still don’t know what Truett did to make himself a candidate for blackmail.” I gave h
im my best Sunday smirk. “Isn’t that odd?” I said, in a puzzled tone of voice.

  He turned away and began talking to himself.

  The end of the trail was in sight when I stepped into that apartment house on Peterboro Street and found the name Mildred Blainey in the list of tenants, but when I held a thumb against the bell, no one answered.

  I had to round up the janitor, tell him a tall story about my being the girl’s uncle from Tuscaloosa. He finally decided to let me in.

  The apartment was empty. The letters were in a suitcase, under a mess of soiled clothes. I read two or three of them and learned that the fatal mistake committed by Dr. Truett was an illegal operation.

  For six hours I cooled my heels, awaiting Josie’s return. But when a key finally turned in the lock and the door opened, I found myself face to face with an officer of the law. He was a big, good-looking Irishman.

  I was surprised. So was he. We talked it over and he informed me that Josie was in the jug. “Picked up,” he said, “for shoplifting, yesterday, and I’m just making a routine check. We found her address written out on a sales-slip in her purse.”

  Half an hour later I was talking to her. “It’s all over,” I told her. “Nick’s dead, the doctor’s dead, the whole business is about to be spread out for the airing it needs. All I want from you is a statement about our little buggy-ride, the night you wore Marge’s scarf and very nearly wrecked my career and my reputation.”

  Staring at me, she wet her lips and said mechanically: “Nick’s … dead?”

  She couldn’t seem to believe that.

  I nodded.

  She went to pieces and I had to call the matron. It was the matron who got from her the statement I had wanted to get for a long time.

  You’ll be reading that statement in the papers real soon, and unless the war takes some dazzling new turn, you’ll be reading it on page one. And a nice little story it will make, too.

  That doesn’t mean, however, that Jefferson Cardin will go back to being a city detective. I sort of like this idea of being independent. And look at the publicity I’m getting.

  So, if you want any murders unmuddled or a tail hung on your rich Uncle Abner, just look me up.

  Stranger in Town

  Published in April 1941. I’m not going to comment on this story. To do so might give it away, and I think it’s the best story in this collection. Never mind what else I was doing for the pulps at this time. I was a year away from doing my first novel, Fishermen Four, published by Dodd, Mead. And a year away from selling my first two American magazine stories, one of which, “Two Were Left,” has been reprinted more than 100 times in anthologies and schoolbooks. and in January 1944 The Saturday Evening Post published the first of 43 stories of mine, an excerpt from one of five books I wrote as a correspondent in World War II. But you know something? I wish the paper shortage in that same war and the advent of pocket-books hadn’t killed off those grand old pulp magazines. They were great fun to read and to write for.

  HBC

  When a man knows there are killers after him that’s bad enough—but to be the unconscious clay-pigeon for a trio of sharpshooters—as Ed Corley was, knowing nothing of the why’s and wherefore’s that made him a target, then it’s really time to muster a miracle or two and take a lesson from the cat in adding extra lives to the ordinary span.

  Link Latham was a big shot and looked it, wearing his two hundred pounds of beef as easily as he wore his transparent suspenders, his balloon-seated trousers, and the three-carat diamond on his left little finger. He paid no attention to the runt sidling up behind him.

  Latham’s attention was centered in its entirety on the pool table against which he leaned, on the array of colored balls and the difficulty of the shot with which he was confronted. He considered himself good at this sort of thing. Difficult shots intrigued him. He seldom missed.

  “Corley’s back,” the runt whispered, standing close behind him.

  Latham grunted, “Don’t bother me!” and sighted across the cue ball, carefully, to the number twelve. The cue slid across his knuckles. The balls clicked. Number twelve lightly rubbed one of its neighbors, caromed off and plopped into the corner pocket. Not until then did the runt’s words strike home. Link Latham stiffened as though some part of his spine were a spring suddenly drawn taut.

  Turning, he said huskily: “What Corley?”

  “Ed.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “No, I ain’t, Link. With my own eyes I seen him in Kepner’s place drinkin’ beer, less’n ten minutes ago.”

  Link Latham wet his lips with an unsteady tongue. He left his cue leaning against the table and started across the room, his round, lumpy face yellowing with each step. He walked slowly on stiff legs, like a man struggling to walk straight with too much liquor in him.

  Three or four men in the pool parlor straightened to watch him, aware that something unusual was happening.

  Latham stepped into the phone booth and mechanically pulled the door shut. His eyes held a hunted look as he unhooked the receiver and fumbled for a nickel. His fat finger trembled in the dial slots.

  He got his number and sent a furtive glance through the door’s glass panel. Then, though no one stood within ten feet of the booth, he put his mouth close to the instrument and spoke in a whisper.

  “Tony,” he said. “Get me Tony.”

  Beads of sweat formed on his lip while he waited.

  “Tony? This is Link. Tony, listen to me. Ed Corley is back … Ed Corley! … What?—No, I ain’t seen him yet. Palumbo just told me. Why is he back, Tony? What does he want? … Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I think, too. And listen, Tony, I’m gonna need help. You understand? I’ll be at my place in twenty minutes. You hustle over there. Bring some of the boys.”

  Alderman Harlan Grossman, alone in a small private office on the seventh floor of the Grayley Building, turned the pages of his evening paper idly. The war news failed to interest him—he was not high enough in politics to turn the war into personal profit. He was weary this afternoon anyway. Sometimes the boys were stubborn. Sometimes it wore him out haggling with them. They were saps to haggle. They should know by now that Harlan Grossman always had his own way in the end.

  An item in the paper stopped him and he scowled, pulling the page closer to his eyes. It was about the new high school under construction on Laydon Street. The new Laydon Street High School, destined to be the city’s pride and joy.

  Something had happened. A night watchman named Moriarty, father of four kids, had been crushed to death last night under a falling ceiling. The contractor was on the carpet. There was to be an investigation.

  Grossman turned quickly to the editorial page. His lip curled as he read a long article on city politics. Moisture formed in the palms of his hands as he read on.

  For some time, the thinking persons of this city have suspected Skullduggery among those who govern them. The stench has been particularly odious in the matter of awarding contracts for public buildings. Now, in a new building which has been called The City’s Pride, a ceiling collapses and a human life is snuffed out. We ask why? We demand a thorough investigation, not only of the entire construction set-up but of materials used, and the source of those materials. In short, we demand, and the public is entitled, to know where lies the responsibility for what has happened.

  Harlan Grossman reached for his phone. “Get me Creeley,” he muttered. While waiting, he ran a finger under his collar and squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Creeley? Hank. About the school—” The receiver chuckled against his ear and a voice said

  softly: “Forget it, Hank. No one knows a thing.” “You sure?” “Positive. The investigation is just so much hooey.” Grossman put the phone down and exhaled noisily through

  his mouth, regaining his composure. The phone rang and he picked it up, his hand steady again. “A Mr. Heffler is calling, Mr. Grossman.”

  “Put him on.”

  The phone did
not chuckle this time. The voice was so low that Grossman had to center all his attention on it. “Grossman, listen. I got scary news. Ed Corley is back.”

  Grossman wet his lips, stared at the phone and weakly, stupidly, said, “What?” “Ed Corley. He’s been seen around. He’s staying at the Minmar.”

  “My God!” Grossman said, the words strangling him.

  “I figured you ought to know, Hank.”

  Grossman hung up. When his secretary entered a few moments later with some letters, he was in the same position, his hand on the phone-cradle. She glanced at him wonderingly. Harlan Grossman was shaking. One thin hand was white and tight against the edge of the desk, and his bony body was queerly tense. Too tense. Sweat gleamed on his high white forehead.

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Grossman?”

  He stood up and reached clumsily for his hat, dropped it, bent his knees and picked it up again. “No, no. I’m all right. Look, Miss Allen, I’m going out. I may not be back this afternoon. Take care of things… .” The words tumbled over one another and were unintelligible as Grossman stumbled on the threshold.

  He went home.

  The telephone in the hall closet of Harlan Grossman’s suburban house was not listed in the book. He preferred to have this number known only to himself and a few selected confidantes. He used the phone now—three times—and then went nervously into the living-room, where he mixed a drink at the small mahogany bar and spilled most of it before getting it to his lips. He was alone in the house.

  Between five and six o’clock he had three callers. Matt Downey was a police sergeant. Philip Patterson, peering near-sightedly through rimless spectacles, was a politician. Rigney, the third caller, was a wiry, white-haired little man who spoke scarcely a dozen words but listened attentively and did a lot of nodding.

  At six, Grossman took a cab downtown. He emerged from the cab on Green Street and walked two blocks, furtively, to the step-down entrance of Club 13. The headwaiter called him by name and admitted him to the private sanctum of the club’s proprietor, Nick Vierick.