Long Live the Dead (17 page)

He inched his chair closer and his breath was hot on the girl’s face. Grinning at her, he put out a hand and touched her arm.

“It’s a long time since I was this close to a woman,” he said.

D
ennis sat in his chair and stared at the madman’s back. He breathed hard and his face was white, strained, his eyes glittered with a strange kind of desperation. Swelling his chest with a prodigious breath, he tested the strength of the rope that held his wrists. Agony crawled down his arms to the tips of his withered fingers.

He turned his head and tried to see how the rope was tied, but though the cords of his neck stood out in hard white lines, he could not move his head far enough. But his gaze did meet that of the Chief of Police.

The madman had leaned closer and was stroking Marie’s hair. And saying: “You’re pretty. It’s too bad I got to kill you, ain’t it?”

Mr. Dennis rolled his wrists, his emaciated useless wrists, in a desperate attempt to create slack in the rope. The agony came again, this time bringing beads of perspiration to his face. Only two men in the world could have escaped from a rope so cunningly knotted—Houdini, the great Houdini, and a magician named Malkar.

Both were—dead.

Mr. Dennis exerted all his strength, defying the agony. It was not enough. Despair darkened his eyes and again a slow, creeping numbness moved through him. It was ironical, this. The dead could not return to life, even to save the living. And if by some monstrous miracle the dead did return to life—if by some amazing power of mind over matter those withered hands of his could be endowed with a strength and dexterity lost three years ago—those same crooked fingers would sign their master’s death warrant. For Karkin was watching. Karkin would know then that the puny hands of Mr. Dennis were not too puny to twist a man’s neck until it snapped.

The madman caressed Marie’s face and said softly: “It’s a shame I got to kill you. I ought to make love to you a while first. But I can’t do that. I got to get out of here.”

Ghastly pale, she looked past him and her gaze met that of Mr. Dennis.

The soul of Mr. Dennis groaned. He clenched his teeth. For three years he had tried in vain to make those withered hands work. Now he tried again, knowing the fate that lay in wait for him if he failed—and if he succeeded.

Perspiration poured from his face. Agony filled it. But he closed his eyes, sunk his teeth into his lower lip and reached back through three years of shadow to a flickering light which still glowed. A strand of rope snapped.

“I got to get out of here and I got to kill you first,” the madman said.

Mr. Dennis’s contorted face was black with agony, but he refused to give up. A second strand snapped, and a third. The madman didn’t seem to hear. He was encompassed with furious passion. He got out of his chair and gripped the girl’s white neck with both his hands.

She tried to scream, but his hands held the scream back. She clawed at him, raked his face with her nails. Her feet beat a tattoo on his legs. Angry, he cursed her and dragged her from the chair to the floor.

Mr. Dennis broke the rope. He jerked his hands around in front of him and stared at them, and his eyes were afire with a kind of madness. Then he hurled himself out of his chair and gained possession of the gun which had fallen from the hands of Chief of Police Karkin a long while ago.

“Stop it!” Mr. Dennis hoarsely shouted. “Stop it, Brandon! By God, I’ll kill you!”

The madman turned, releasing Marie. In a half crouch he blinked his eyes at Dennis, who stood wide-legged, holding the gun.

A snarl curled Brandon’s lips. He reached out with both hands and lurched forward to drag Mr. Dennis down.

Dennis shot him twice and stepped aside as the man fell sprawling.

The silence came back.

For some time Mr. Dennis looked down at the gun in his hands; then he placed it on the table and lifted Marie into a chair. He looked tired. His face wore an expression of misery.

The girl stared at him and her eyes were wide. “You did it, Andre!” she whispered. “You did it! Your hands—”

“Yes,” he said, “I did it.”

He turned then and said to the Chief of Police: “Have you a key to these cuffs?”

“No,” Karkin said.

“It doesn’t matter.” Mr. Dennis removed his gloves and quietly stripped a lace from one of his shoes. On his knees, he formed a loop with the lace and deftly worked the loop over the end of the screw. A quick tug snapped the bolt back and the cuffs were open.

Karkin rose to his knees. “You told me,” he said slowly, “those hands of yours were weak.”

“Yes.”

“After what I just saw, I know you lied. You’ll have to come with me, Dennis.”

“Yes, I know. For murdering Papa Nickson.”

Karkin nodded. Sliding his gun from the table, he holstered it but kept his hand over it. “I hate to do this,” he muttered, “after you saved our lives, but the law is the law. Maybe you had a good reason for killin’ Papa Nickson, but it ain’t up to me to ask you.”

Mr. Dennis lifted Karkin to his feet. Lurchingly, the officer put a hand on Mr. Dennis’s arm. “You gotta come with me.”

Mr. Dennis said, as if to himself: “The dead live—and the dead die again.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” said Mr. Dennis, and stopped. “Wait a minute, Karkin. This madman isn’t dead.”

Karkin scowled and looked down at John Brandon, and Brandon reached out to clutch at his leg. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth, but the mouth was grinning.

“You’re makin’ a mistake,” Brandon laughed.“You’re crazy like they said I was. He didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do what?”

“Kill that old man. A man he called Andy done it. I was right there, lookin’ in a window. That’s how smart I am! I heard them talkin’ and I seen it happen, I did.” He laughed insanely and blood came. “If you think this man done it, you belong where I come from. Andy done it. But I won’t tell. I won’t tell and they’ll put
you
away!”

“Andy Slade?” Karkin breathed.

“That’s right. Andy Slade.” The blood came faster. “I was right there and I seen it, and I followed him here through the woods, and—” Brandon howled horribly in glee. “Hell, are you dumb! I seen it from the window, I heard it all. But I ain’t telling you that I seen that kid kill the old fellow.”

Karkin looked at Mr. Dennis. “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m real glad, Mr. Dennis.” He put out his hand and Dennis gripped it. Gripped it hard. “I’ll go get Slade,” Karkin said. “Get me help—from town.”

Mr. Dennis started out to go to the village, and in a moment Marie joined him.

“The great Malkar is alive again,” she said softly.

This is a long yarn with a rather complicated plot on several levels. The longest, in fact, that i had written for
Black Mask
up to that time, December 1938. when I began selling to the pulps I didn’t have an agent, but after a while Rogers Terrill of
Popular Publications
put me in touch with Agent Lurton Blassingame (whom everyone called ‘Count’), after which I mailed every story to Lurton instead of to editors of magazines, so I didn’t deal directly with either Cap Shaw or Fanny Ellsworth. Eventually, by the way, Lurton became a close friend. For years we went fishing every spring and fall together, often with Ednor Ken White of
Dime Detective
(and later of
Black Mask
). One summer we explored the Canadian wilderness between Lake Huron and Hudson Bay by Canoe—a grand adventure which, if you like, you can read about in my first novel,
Fishermen Four
, or my 39th book,
The Dawning
, published in July 2000 by Leisure Books.

HBC

The girl in a red cape pursues trouble andstumbles onto a plot where life means little.

J
ohn Smith gazed with exaggerated tolerance at his fair companion. Of course it was not difficult to exercise patience with a young lady so scandalously lovely.

He was, in fact, used to it. “Ever so many men, Angel,” he declared, “smoke long black cigarettes. Even I do at times.”

“The heat, Mr. Edgerson, has made you lazy. Otherwise you’d jump at a thing like this.”

Smith’s other name was Philip Edgerson. He hated it because it brought to mind too many memories of birthdays, Christmases and people sick in bed. He was head of a greeting card company. Now he put down his cocktail and leaned back.

They were dining in Polinoff’s, and it had not been a good idea. Polinoff’s on an August afternoon was far too hot, too stuffy, for the enjoyment of pig knuckles and spiced red cabbage.

“I’m thinking of abandoning Trouble, Incorporated, Angel.”

“Said he, lying,” she retorted.

“No, I mean it. Look. I’ve paid rent on that ninth floor cell for eleven months now, and not a customer. Not a single client. A man’s hobby, as I see it, should be more productive than that.”

“It has been,” Angelina said simply.

“Not financially.”

“Mr. Philip Edgerson,” she said, “makes quite enough money to support the hobby of John Smith. It’s the heat, that’s all.”

“I suppose it is.”

He reached out then and picked up the letter she had read to him. It was a neat little thing, written delicately in green ink on ten-cent-store paper which bore the gilt initials,

M.A.B. It read:

Dear Miss Kaye,

This is the third time I have tried to write to you, but on each previous occasion my courage has left me before I could finish. This time, however, I am determined to go through with it. You see, I am really desperate.

Please do not be angry with me if this is a long letter. I know that you urge those who write to you to be brief, but I have so much to tell.

I am nineteen years old, Miss Kaye, and was married just a little over a year ago to the dearest boy in all the world. Teddy was so loving then and so considerate. We saved money and planned for the future and were just as happy as two birds in a nest. And now all that is changed.

I am not really sure when the trouble began. Now that I look back on it, I realize that Teddy acted queerly for days, even weeks, before he actually began staying out nights and leaving me alone. During that period he was awfully quiet and seemed always to be wrapped up in his thoughts. I thought he was worried about his job, and I tried to be tender with him, but he refused to confide in me. He even told me once that it was none of my business.

Then, Miss Kaye, he began staying out late at night, sometimes until two or three o’clock in the morning, and I was sick with worry. When I spoke to him about it he told me to leave him alone and stop nagging him, but I wasn’t nagging him, I was just frantic that our love would die and he would drift away from me.

It went on this way for almost a month, Miss Kaye, and then he began bringing these men to the house. Three or four times a week they came, and they were nice enough, I suppose. At least they always said hello to me, but instead of sitting in the parlor like ordinary friends, they and Teddy would go upstairs to Teddy’s den and close the door and stay up there until all hours. Sometimes there would be three of them, sometimes more.

Well, Miss Kaye, I do not pretend to be any judge of character, but I am positive in my own heart that these men are not good for Teddy. They are not his kind. They are older, for one thing, and they seem very wise in the ways of the world. One of them, whom the others seem to look upon as a sort of leader, is a foreigner, at least twenty years older than my husband, and he smokes long black cigarettes continually, and the house reeks from it. And furthermore, if these men were proper companions for Teddy, he would introduce me to them, wouldn’t he? But he hasn’t. He just said, “Boys, meet the wife.” Which hurt me terribly.

Please, Miss Kaye, tell me what to do to win my husband away from these men. I am worried to desperation for fear I will lose him, and for fear he is getting mixed up in something that will bring trouble to us both.

Anxiously yours, Margaret Arnold Burdick.

P.S. If you print this letter in your column, please sign it “Worried Wife” because if you used my real name Teddy would be angry, I’m sure.

M.A.B.

John Smith, president of Trouble, Inc., carefully folded the letter and passed it back. “Do you get many like that, Miss Kaye?” She frowned at him. Her name was not Katherine Kaye any more than his was John Smith. Her name, when she was not opening letters from love-sick wives at her desk in the
Star
office, was Angelina Copeland. Angel to her friends.

“You think it’s a rib, Philip?”

“As phony, Angel, as some of the sentiments I’m guilty of perpetrating.”

“I don’t. I think it’s on the level. I’m going out there. After all, Philip, you’ve bored me to death for months about that fool professor who smoked black cigarettes and here we have a guy who—”

“You know the address?”

She took from her purse an envelope which matched the letter. “Spencer Street, 154. You
could
drive me out there,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll have to go by trolley.”

Edgerson heaved an elaborate sigh. It was a hot, sticky afternoon. From nine to twelve he had faithfully perspired through his duties as president of the Edgerson Greeting Card Company, watching the clock and looking forward to a long, cool drive into the country with Angel, a dip in some shady lake, dinner and dancing at some quiet roadhouse far from the city’s heat.

Now he was to be John Smith again. It was inevitable. He disliked this silly Margaret Arnold Burdick intensely. He resented the fact that she had found it necessary to mention a large foreign person who incessantly smoked long black cigarettes. Because, after all, the thing was ridiculous. Dubitsky was dead. Dubitsky had been dead for at least four months. The Dubitsky whose strange death had intrigued him was gone forever. Margaret Burdick’s foreigner would turn out to be a wrestler or a man selling carpets. Or a myth.

“I’ll drive you,” he said sourly, “but you’ll regret it. Mark my words, Angel, you’ll regret it.”

A
t least half a dozen times since the birth of Trouble, Inc., Edgerson had been on the verge of closing the tiny office in the Mason Building and chucking the whole thing to the dogs. On each and every one of those occasions, Angelina had popped up with something “hot.” It was she, not he, who kept his hobby, Trouble, Inc., going. He half suspected that the Trouble idea had been hers in the first place anyway.