Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 247
“Life is not my business,” remarked Mr. Brown. “I deal exclusively with death.”
“Not when it comes to drinking,” she retorted.
“I have my lighter moments,” replied Brown. “For example, madam, I’d like to sell you a crib or a baby carriage.”
“With my husband lying dead in that coffin?”
“That coffin,” said Mr. Brown, “contains only one husband. There are lots of others knocking about.”
“Your calling has corrupted your morals,” declared Lorna. “If I thought for one moment you were making improper advances I’d be very much pleased.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Mr. Brown. “Not with your husband lurking in that coffin. The lid isn’t screwed down.”
“Do you mean,” she demanded, “my husband isn’t quite dead?”
“He’s a little more than dead,” Mr. Brown assured her. “Your husband is already a skeleton.”
“Then it isn’t my husband at all,” said Lorna. “That’s Señor Toledo.”
“My God!” cried Mr. Brown. “Have I made another mistake?”
“Let’s go and see,” she suggested. “Perhaps it is my husband after all.”
“I hope to heaven it is,” Brown declared earnestly.
“Thanks for your kind wishes,” was Lorna’s tart reply. “Just for that I do hope it’s Señor Toledo and that he died without a cent to pay for your old coffin.”
“If it is that Toledo person,” retorted Mr. Brown, “I’ll yank him out of that coffin a darned sight faster than he ever got in it, mark my words.”
“And I’d have you run in for body-snatching,” Lorna calmly stated.
“How can you snatch a body,” Mr. Brown wanted to know, “when this one consists entirely of bones?”
“That,” said Lorna, “strikes me as taking an even unfairer advantage of the dead. A skeleton must be about the easiest type of body to snatch. The judge would want to know why you didn’t pick on a body your size.”
“Will you two please stop bickering about snatching my body?” demanded the coffin, and this time the voice though thick was by no means muffled.
Both Lorna and Mr. Brown looked up from their glasses to encounter a rare and awesome resurrection. Quintus Bland, clad in a flowing beard, was sitting up in his coffin and peering at them dimly out of sleep-laden eyes.
“Want a drink,” announced Quintus Bland.
“I thought you said you put a skeleton in that coffin,” said Lorna, turning on the dazed Mr. Brown.
“I didn’t say I put one in,” protested that worthy mortician. “I said a skeleton crawled in unaided, and I stand by that statement.”
“Was he wearing that astonishing beard at the time?” she demanded.
“Am I not a skeleton any more?” Bland mildly inquired.
“I should say not,” replied Lorna. “You’re as naked as a coot, aside from that offensive bush.”
“That being the case,” reflected Mr. Bland aloud, “the beard should be a couple of feet longer, estimating conservatively.”
“Get out of that coffin at once,” snapped Lorna, “and remove that silly beard.”
“That,” observed her husband, “is an indecent suggestion.”
“Indecent suggestions are the only kind you like or understand.”
“I like them when it is the other party who does the suggesting,” he replied, “or when it’s mutual. If you, my love, will remove your frock I will gladly yank off my beard. The only thing that will get me out of this exceedingly comfortable coffin is the refusal of a drink.”
Gratified by this glowing testimonial to 1007-A, Mr. Brown arose and presented Mr. Bland with the entire bottle.
“You look even better in it the way you are,” said Brown, “than when you were a skeleton.”
“That’s saying a lot,” replied Bland, eagerly plucking the bottle from the mortician’s hand. “I’ve had a most refreshing little nap in this fascinating crib. If my wife were not so snooty, I’d take up the matter of removing our antiquated nuptial couch and substituting twin coffins instead.”
“There’s an idea in that,” observed Mr. Brown. “Only it might be bad for my furniture business.”
“I fully appreciate the point,” said Mr. Bland. “People can hardly be buried in their beds, whereas they can be in their coffins. I withdraw the suggestion, old boy. At this stage in our so-called national recovery we must stimulate sales rather than retard them.”
“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Brown. “More people should go to bed, and many more should die.”
“I suggest that both of you die,” said Lorna. “Your loss would be a gain to the nation.”
“Silence, woman!” commanded Mr. Bland, peering fiercely at her over his terrible beard. “If economists practised what they preached, there would be damned few economists, and I, for one, would be just as well pleased.”
“Listen,” said Lorna. “You’ve got me licked. I can’t talk to you if you’re going to keep wearing that homicidal-looking beard.”
“Madam,” Bland told her calmly, “this beard and coffin are indispensable to my happiness.”
“They are most detrimental to mine,” said Lorna. “That, together with the knowledge that I have an occasional skeleton for a husband.”
“Would you prefer a skeleton to a dirty dog?” asked Mr. Bland significantly.
“Both are equally objectionable,” said Lorna.
“Yes, but if Señor Toledo had not gallantly saved you from your folly,” Bland retorted, “you’d have been in a pretty fix, my dear young wench.”
“You did it for your own selfish interests,” Lorna replied. “You saved me for yourself.”
“At the risk of breaking every bone in my body,” supplied Mr. Bland. “Which reminds me, has your dear Phil fully recovered from his fright?”
“Why wash your dirty linen in public?” Lorna asked evasively.
“As you can see,” said Mr. Bland, “I haven’t a scrap of linen about me, either clean or dirty. An old dishrag would do me a world of good.”
“What did you do with your clothes?”
“My apprentice embalmer,” said Mr. Brown, “was trying them on a client when we left. A conscientious young man.”
“I did have a pair of drawers,” Bland wistfully observed, “but they must have got jolted off during the drive.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do about all this,” lamented Lorna. “Here I find myself conversing with a drunken mortician and a naked and falsely bearded husband seated in a huge coffin in the middle of my best room. You can see for yourself it’s unnatural. Suppose somebody should call?”
And that was precisely what somebody did at that inauspicious moment. Somebody called — two, in fact. They called to give Lorna a pleasant little surprise and were all brimming over with well-being and merriment. The surprise they gave was returned in full measure, but it was far from pleasant.
Finding the front door off the lock, Mr. and Mrs. Tucker, Lorna’s brother-in-law and sister, crept into the house and continued creeping until they arrived at the door of the living room. Here they stopped creeping. Had they possessed the power they probably would have crept backwards and as silently left the house. But the scene that confronted them robbed them of all powers for the moment. However, it could not stop Mrs. Tucker’s set greeting. Not knowing what she was saying, she cried out in a dead voice: “Hello, everybody!”
“Who’s that?” shouted Quintus Bland.
“How do I know?” said Mr. Brown.
“Dear God,” quavered Lorna.
Then the scene became one of frenzied action.
CHAPTER TEN: THE BODY IS VIEWED WITHOUT FAVOR
IT WAS Brown who shot fire through the frozen tableau. As drunk as he was, his brain and body functioned with startling rapidity. Like a seasoned football player he flung himself upon the body of a shocked and protesting Bland and bore him down into the depths of 1007-A. Even then Mr. Bland did not abandon the battle or, better still, the bottle. For a brief moment it was flourished aloft like the sword of a fallen chieftain, then it was deftly snatched from view by an extremely busy mortician. The next moment an amazing change came over the man. His still flushed face grew calm and assumed an expression of sorrow controlled by resignation. He clasped his hands in front of him in an attitude of silent prayer. He bowed his head slightly in humility and sorrow. In this posture he stood by the coffin and gazed down at its shocking contents with spellbound reverence.
What he actually contemplated was the entirely naked figure of a long, lank Quintus Bland, stretched out at full length with his horrid beard far off center and completely concealing his mouth. While the eyes of Mr. Bland glared up malevolently at Mr. Brown, the beard puffed and bellowed wickedly as the hot breath of its wearer surged indignantly through its strands.
Looking down on this weird yet formidable figure, Mr. Brown could not help thinking how much more colorful his life would be if the corpses he did business with had only one tenth of the spunk and animation of the unlovely body now stretched out before him. Also, the distressing thought occurred to him that if that alarmingly active beard crept up a little higher Mr. Bland stood in imminent danger of becoming a corpse in reality through the simple process of suffocation.
While Mr. Brown was occupied with his varied reflections, Lorna was doing her bit in another direction. Flying to her sister, the stunned Mrs. Tucker, she fell so heavily on that lady’s neck that both of them nearly collapsed to the floor. Lorna’s breath alone would have floored a much stronger woman than the one now staggering under her sudden assault.
Meanwhile Mr. Tucker, a man of an observant eye and an inquiring disposition, having rallied from the first shock, was about to advance into the room to investigate the situation. Surely, he decided, if any situation deserved investigation this one did.
Lorna was quick to sense his intentions. Immediately she took steps. She gave her sister a violent push backwards, thus further removing her from the coffin and its inmate, then hurled herself into the arms of her brother-in-law. The man had no other choice than to catch hold of her. Otherwise she would have crashed to his feet.
For a moment, at least, the advance of the Tuckers was checked. Lorna needed time to parley with them. In the back of her mind she wondered if the drunken mortician possessed sufficient sense to throw something over the naked reaches of her equally drunken husband. If not, she hoped he had flipped Mr. Bland over on his stomach. An unconventional posture for a corpse, perhaps, but one which would cover a multitude of sins, including that desperate beard. She could tell the Tuckers that it was being done in Hollywood, or that it had been her husband’s last request.
“Lorna,” he had said, “bury me on my stomach. I’ve always slept that way.”
Such mad thoughts flashed through her distracted mind before she regained the ability to express herself in words. When she did they came in great quantities.
To her surprising expressions of sorrow Dolly, who had always been dumb, could find no adequate reply. Also, she was too deeply engrossed in adjusting the disarranged garments which her emotional sister had half dragged off her body. Not so Mr. Tucker. He was smelling rats in ever-increasing numbers.
“I say, old girl,” he said, “this is a terrible shock. Is it — is it — —”
“Yes, Frank,” Lorna broke in, “it’s Quintie. Little Quintie — the dirty old dog.”
Frank considered this information while delicately sniffing a familiar odor on the air.
“Was it sudden, old girl?” he asked.
“Was it sudden?” repeated Lorna enthusiastically, snapping her fingers. “Like that. Just like a snowball in hell. The mortician is adjusting him now. What a man!”
“Adjusting him?” said Frank. “Looked more to me as if he were wrestling with him when we came in.”
“No, Frank, you’re wrong,” declared Lorna. “Quintie was a punk wrestler.”
Deep in 1007-A, Quintie was chewing his beard in rage while Mr. Brown pressed two reverent hands heavily down on his chest.
“Are you burying him with a bottle?” asked Frank. “I could have sworn I saw him holding one in his hand.”
“We were thinking of it, Frank dear,” said Lorna. “He was such a lovable sot. Seldom did he have a bottle out of his hand or two inches from his mouth. And what a mouth! Just like a split watermelon.”
At this, Mr. Bland’s mouth did split just like a watermelon as he fairly devoured his beard. From the depth of the coffin issued low, gurgling sounds, horrible to hear.
“That’s the mortician,” said Lorna, quickly. “He’s intoning a prayer for the drunk, or the dead, it doesn’t matter which. Both are helpless. If the mortician couldn’t intone he couldn’t mort. He doesn’t do it so well, does he? I think he’s a little mad.”
Upon hearing this, Mr. Brown felt inclined to allow the demented occupant of 1007-A to escape with his beard and his nakedness. “After all,” thought Brown, “this is none of my affair.” However, he still pressed down for the simple reason that he was not so sure that he himself would not be the first object of Mr. Bland’s attack.
“What’s that fellow doing?” Frank Tucker suddenly asked. “Looks like he’s kneading the body of good old Blandie.”
Dolly Tucker gave a little scream at this. She was still too shocked to speak.
“Needing him?” asked Lorna, puzzled. “Oh, yes, he needs the body. He needs it for his business. Money in the pocket, you know.”
“But, Lorna dear,” said Dolly, made vocal by weariness from having stood so long in the hall, “won’t you even allow us to view the remains and then sit quietly down somewhere? You act and talk so strangely. I’m sure you need a little comfort and consolation.”
“I’d rather have a drink,” replied Lorna. “That’s all I’ve lived on since the world’s worst photographer passed out.”
Part of the statement was true. Lorna was so deep in her cups and so angry with her husband that she had deliberately set out to torture him. She was succeeding far beyond her fondest expectations. Her only regret was that she could not peer down into 1007-A and enjoy his reactions. What right had he to bring a great, hulking coffin into her house and reveal himself naked in that beard? If he thought he was funny, well, she would be funny, too.
On his part Frank Tucker now knew that something was definitely wrong with the whole queer business. The one thing that gave him pause was the presence of that huge and obviously expensive coffin. The situation amused as well as puzzled him. And he knew that the wild ravings of his sister-in-law sprang more from a bottle than from a grief-stricken heart.
In the living room Mr. Brown had developed a new and improved line of strategy. Instead of holding Mr. Bland down by brute force, he was now letting a bottle do it for him.
“Will you stay here quietly and take off that beard if I give you a bottle?” he had asked Mr. Bland.
“I’ll lie here quietly,” that gentleman had replied, “but I won’t take off the beard.”
“Why won’t you take off the beard?” Mr. Brown had whispered.
“I don’t know myself,” Mr. Bland had whispered back. “I’ve an odd feeling the thing has taken root and become a part of my chin. Anyway, most of it is in my mouth, and I can’t get it out.”
“Very well, then,” Mr. Brown had replied passionately. “Keep your damned beard, but for God’s sake don’t pop up.”
Mr. Bland had kept his beard and had not popped up. Now he was incapable of popping, except of popping the bottle through the beard whenever he found the strength. All signs pointed to a speedy return to slumber.
With so much freedom on his tired hands Mr. Brown, having found the residence of the bottles, was doing a little popping on his own account. This he did by stealth in an obscure corner of the room.
Lorna had at last allowed Dolly and Frank to sit down. They were now in the dining room, where they were having a little something wet, wetness being Lorna’s one and only idea of hospitality. Beyond this her mind could not penetrate. It made entertaining simpler and happier.
“When are you going to bury him?” Dolly was asking.
Lorna gulped.
“At the full of the moon,” she said.
“My God!” exclaimed Frank. “The moon won’t be full for two weeks.”
“Well,” replied Lorna, “you know how time flies. I was never one for rushing things myself.”
Fanny, the passionate maid, appeared with Busy.
“Oh, Fanny,” said Lorna, “did the dog howl just before?”
“Before what, madam?” asked the puzzled Fanny.
“Don’t be dull, girl,” said Lorna. “Before his master passed out?”
“Why, no, madam,” replied the startled Fanny, who had been absent from the house during most of the afternoon.
“Then he’s no sort of dog at all,” said Lorna. “All decent dogs howl just before and frequently during. And Fanny, keep him away from the body. He might try to play with it. I wouldn’t mind if the beast wasn’t so rough. It’s a bother to have to keep doing a body over and over again. Mr. Brown, the mortician, is a charming man, but they tell me he does get impatient with his bodies. He might give this body the gate.”
Fanny looked completely dazed. For once her arrogant pride of sex seemed to desert her.
“When did the master die, Mrs. Bland?” she managed to get out.
“About an hour after he had chased you downstairs,” Lorna maliciously informed the maid. “Remember, Fanny? He was all naked and howling. Perhaps that’s why that square dog didn’t howl. He probably thought there’d been enough howling in the house for one day. The doctor said the poor man died from thwarted passion, and you know what that means. But I don’t hold it against you, Fanny. You had your housework to do and you very creditably thought of duty first. However, I hope it teaches you a lesson, my girl. I hope it does. Never keep a man waiting. He might die on your hands. And then where would you be? I ask you. You’d be without a man, and that is just no place. We must have our men, my girl, in spite of the fact that they’re all scum, including Frank Tucker. Oh, my heart is breaking. That’s all, Fanny. I’ll be seeing you. Where are you going, Dolly?”
