Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 248
Dolly turned on her sister indignantly.
“I’m going in to poor Quintus,” she said. “Someone should be with him for the sake of decency. And then I’m going home. Lorna, I hate to say it, but you’re either out of your mind or you’re a very, very wicked woman. Come, Frank. I won’t permit her to call you names.”
Frank rose and looked down at Lorna, who solemnly winked up at him. Frank grinned and followed his wife from the room, as husbands have been doing ever since doors were invented.
“You can have the last word,” Lorna called after Dolly. “Mine would raise the roof. But mark me well, sister. If you’re going to look at Quintus for the sake of decency, I shudder to think of what you’d look at for the sake of fun.”
“Now, I wonder, Frank,” said Dolly, “just what she meant by that?”
Dolly soon found out.
Mr. Brown had continued his popping until he could pop no longer. He now sat slumbering gently beside the glistening flank of his well-loved 1007-A. Within the coffin its temporary resident had popped himself into even deeper oblivion. Momentarily he was, to all intents and purposes, as nearly dead as a man can well afford to be. Fortunately, before his final collapse, Mr. Brown had exhibited the decency if not the good taste to find Mr. Bland’s drawers and to help him to put them on.
Upon the entrance of Frank and Dolly Tucker, Mr. Brown awoke and made a feeble attempt to rise. This effort failing, he made the best of a bad situation and waved a welcoming hand to his visitors.
“May we view the body now?” asked Dolly in a hushed voice.
“Whose body?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Why, the deceased’s, of course,” replied Dolly.
“Well, I’m nearly dead myself,” Mr. Brown affably informed her. “I didn’t know. One body to me is about as bad as another.”
In spite of himself Frank Tucker could not suppress a low laugh. Dolly was shocked. She was even a little frightened.
“Frank,” she murmured, “I’m ashamed. You’re as bad as Lorna.”
“Sorry, dear,” he said. “It’s nerves. Death always makes me giddy.”
Turning icily from her husband, Dolly made another try at Mr. Brown, who by this time had managed to get himself back to sleep.
“Mr. Brown,” she began.
“What’s that? What’s that?” he said in a startled voice. “Has the prisoner escaped?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dolly replied desperately.
“Doubt if I do myself,” said Brown. “Please state your business, madam. Do you want a baby carriage?”
“No, Mr. Brown,” said Dolly with sweet patience. “Have you finished with Mr. Bland?”
“My God, yes,” Mr. Brown replied with more vigor than he had yet shown. “He’s nearly ruined me. It’s been the toughest job I’ve ever tackled.”
“Then may we look at him?” continued Dolly, striving to hide her horror of the man.
“If you want a good laugh, yes,” said Brown. “I can’t stand the sight of him myself.”
Once more Mr. Brown drifted off to sleep. With a shudder Dolly turned away and approached the coffin. Taking her husband’s arm and assuming a sort of hushed, tense expression, she gazed down upon Mr. Bland. Then her expression stiffened and solidified. She looked as if she would never lose it. A small, fluttering cry escaped her lips.
“The beard makes up for a lot,” murmured Frank. “Have you noticed it?”
“But, Frank,” breathed Dolly, “it’s growing all wrong. It’s — it’s — it’s a frightful beard. That man should be a butcher instead of a mortician.”
“Do you smell anything, Dolly?” asked Frank.
“Whisky,” gasped Dolly. “He reeks of it.”
“And he still has some left,” said Frank, pointing to a bottle clutched in the hand of the corpse.
“I just won’t permit that,” declared Dolly. “Even if it isn’t any of my business.”
“His beard still seems to have a spark of life left in it,” observed her husband. “Notice how it sways gently as if fanned by a light breeze.”
“Do you think — —” said Dolly as she reached for the bottle. “Can it be — —” she continued, taking a firm grip on the bottle itself.
“While she was thus engaged, Frank Tucker placed his forefinger experimentally on the tip of Mr. Bland’s nose. This action, together with the threatened loss of his property, produced a startling manifestation in the corpse. With a loud sneeze he blew his beard down to his chin. At the same moment he half rose in his coffin.
“What the hell!” said Mr. Bland.
It was the most awful moment in Dolly’s life. With a shriek that frightened Mr. Bland still further out of the coffin and Mr. Brown completely out of his chair, Dolly fled from the room and from the house. She was followed reluctantly by her husband, as husbands often, if not always, do.
“Would you mind telling me,” said Mr. Bland, addressing himself to a startled Brown, “just what the hell all this is about?”
“I’m not sure,” said Brown, “but I think you’ve just had callers.”
“Thank God they’re gone,” Lorna remarked coolly, strolling into the room with a glass in her hand.
“That’s the only point upon which we agree, you little viper,” retorted her husband.
“Go on, be a skeleton for us, Quintie,” she amiably jeered back. “We need some fun.”
Even Mr. Brown disapproved a little of some of Mr. Bland’s subsequent remarks to his wife.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: A DIRTY MAN DIGS HIS GRAVE
HAD Quintus Bland been a horse or even a rabbit, it would have been an easy matter to lure him from his coffin through the trifling inducement of carrots. And it would have been a better thing for Mr. Bland, because carrots are good for one’s health, whereas, we are told, whisky is not. On the other hand, it has never been successfully established that carrots elevate the soul. Incontrovertibly whisky does, assuming the subject has a soul to elevate. One cannot eat a carrot, then almost immediately burst into loud song, or dance with rugged abandon. Yet if one but consumes an equal displacement of whisky one can achieve both of these feats even though one has never attempted them before.
The suggestion of carrots to Mr. Bland, reclining in 1007-A, and clad in the tightest of raiment, would have been revolting. It might have driven the man mad or broken his heart. The mere hope of a drink of whisky caused him to scramble out of what threatened to become his permanent habitation with even greater alacrity than he had shown on entering it. This came to pass only after he was convinced that he possessed within himself the last drop in his bottle.
It was not a pretty sight nor an edifying one to see Quintus Bland draping his long naked body over the side of the coffin, yet it did show perseverance.
“I’m not sure that you did him a favor, Mr. Brown, when you dragged on those drawers,” observed a critical Lorna as she and the mortician sat watching Mr. Bland’s heroic efforts. “No,” she continued, “I’m sure you didn’t. There might have been something primitively appealing had you left him entirely naked, but those drawers deprive the man of his last shred of dignity. Regard how they hang askew.”
“Will you please go to hell?” Mr. Bland mildly asked his wife as soon as his feet touched the floor. “But before going be so good as to give me a drink.”
“Not,” she told him, “until you’ve removed that lovely little beard. It’s dangling from your left ear. If you strapped it about your waist you’d look like a Scotch highlander.”
“Must I go through all this for the sake of a mere drink?” inquired Mr. Bland.
“Men have gone through more,” said Lorna and gave him a drink.
He drank the drink, returned the glass, and wanted to know if that was all. Deep in her eyes as Lorna looked up at her husband was a veiled glow of affection. She handed him a fresh bottle.
“Fanny,” she said, “has telephoned for a carload.”
Mr. Brown swayed over to the coffin and peered into its depth. Then he extracted an empty bottle therefrom and returned to his chair. He appeared to be in a thoughtful mood.
“What I’d like to settle,” he said after a moment’s reflection, “is just this: is that your coffin or is it my coffin?”
“An interesting point,” said Mr. Bland. “Tell me, Brown, is the coffin greatly damaged?”
“Somewhat crushed,” Mr. Brown admitted. “Sort of thumbed and fingered here and there, and then it is stained with whisky in spots, but fairly speaking, it is still a top-notch article.”
“I loved it,” said Mr. Bland wistfully.
“Couldn’t it be sold as a second-hand coffin?” asked Lorna.
“Who ever heard of a second-hand coffin?” Mr. Brown wanted to know.
“That’s just the point,” replied Lorna. “If nobody has ever heard of a second-hand coffin, that fact might make it easier to sell one.”
“Even to me,” declared Mr. Brown, “the idea is unpleasant. Imagine. A second-hand coffin. Gracious.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Lorna admitted. “It would be hard to find a second-hand body to fill it.”
“All bodies are second-hand after they’ve once been used,” observed Mr. Bland. “Just like automobiles.”
“That’s ridiculous,” protested Lorna. “My body is better today than it ever was.”
“Did you ever try to sell it?” asked Mr. Brown crudely.
“I’d like to kick a hole in your damned old coffin,” Lorna retorted viciously.
“I defy you to kick a hole in that coffin,” said Mr. Brown quite blandly. “The thing is practically bulletproof, and besides that, who said it was my coffin?”
“Well, it isn’t our coffin,” declared Lorna. “I wouldn’t let Quintus get buried in it, as much as I’d like to see the last of him.”
“Have you definitely decided not to die?” the mortician asked, turning to Mr. Bland.
“Sorry, old man,” said Mr. Bland. “I think it would be better if I didn’t.”
“Then don’t let’s think about it for the present,” Mr. Brown suggested wearily. “The problem bewilders me.”
“Right is right,” put in Lorna, for no particular reason.
“I find that vague,” said Brown. “Let’s change the subject.”
Fanny changed it for them. She entered the room on tiptoe, then uttered a little scream upon seeing Mr. Bland. Since the removal of his beard he had taken a fancy to a Paisley shawl which he was now wearing toga fashion like some lean and debauched Roman emperor.
“I thought he was in that,” said Fanny, motioning to the coffin.
“He was,” Mr. Brown replied calmly, “but he’s back again.”
“Should he remove the shawl, Fanny?” Lorna asked darkly. “Has he got too much on?”
“Goodness, no, Mrs. Bland,” replied the passionate maid. “I’ve seen enough of him.”
“I should say so,” agreed Lorna. “You couldn’t have seen any more of a man unless you encountered a freak with three legs, or a double stomach, or an extra toe here and there.”
“I don’t like that kind, Mrs. Bland,” confessed Fanny with the utmost simplicity.
“I’m glad you’re not greedy,” observed Mrs. Bland. “Did you come in here to view the old familiar body, or what?”
“I might have taken a squint at it,” the maid admitted, “but that’s not why I came.”
“Are we supposed to guess,” asked Mr. Bland, “or would you like to tell us?”
Fanny regarded her master with a pair of smoldering eyes which fairly tore off the Paisley shawl and flung it in a corner, then she turned back to Lorna.
“The stuff has come, Mrs. Bland,” she said. “I thought you might be needing it for your little celebration, but now I see you’ve no occasion to celebrate.”
“All women are wenches,” observed Mr. Bland, tossing his remark somewhere in the general direction of 1007-A.
“All this bickering is making me feel decidedly uncomfortable,” Mr. Brown complained. “Why not send this lush young filly for another bottle? She’s doing me no good as she is.”
“Fanny,” said Lorna, “bring the gentleman a bottle. We must handle our leading mortician with kid gloves. Personally, I wouldn’t touch him with tongs.”
Alarming chemical changes were taking place beneath the Paisley shawl. Fanny, glancing in that direction, unleashed a series of short, sharp shrieks. They ended abruptly in speech.
“He’s back!” she cried. “The skeleton — Señor Toledo. Oh, look! How did he do it? I’ll go for the bottles.”
“Bring ’em all in,” Mr. Brown shouted after the speeding maid, then turning to look at the horror lurking beneath the Paisley shawl, he said severely: “For God’s sake, man, why don’t you ring a bell or blow a horn before you do a thing like that?”
“It’s positively indecent the way that man sneaks into a skeleton,” complained Lorna. “If I were going to be a skeleton I’d writhe and gnash and make noises of a distinctly unpopular nature. Now I do need a drink.”
“Oh, damn,” said Mr. Bland. “Oh, damn, damn, damn. How I hate it all. And just as we were getting on so well together.”
There was a note of real tragedy in his voice. Lorna glanced at him quickly and for no reason at all felt a catch at her throat.
“If we can stand you, old comrade,” she said, “you should make an effort to stand yourself.”
“But can’t you see,” he explained in a low voice. “I’m so damned different from you all, so cut off and useless.”
“Oh, look,” said Lorna, pointing. “Enter totteringly: the world’s most passionate maid, bearing an armful of pretty bottles.”
“Give me a pretty bottle,” muttered the Paisley shawl.
When Mr. Bland rose to find the corkscrew the effect was immense. The shawl dropped from him, and he stood in all his bony structure, clad only in his drawers. Fanny hastily put down the bottles, so poignant were her emotions. Mr. Brown was fascinated beyond speech. He merely stared at Mr. Bland and gulped. The wife of the skeleton was prey to mingled emotions. On the whole she decided she would rather not look at him for a moment.
“If you have any pity in your ribs,” she said at last, “you’ll remove those drawers without further delay.”
“They’re coming off unassisted,” Mr. Bland informed her. “They invariably do when I am in this condition.”
“And I for one don’t blame them,” observed Mr. Brown with feeling.
“But suppose I should suddenly turn back?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Then we’ll turn ours,” said Lorna. “Any sight is preferable to a skeleton in drawers. Just be yourself for a while. We’ve all been through such a lot.”
“Is eating an exploded theory in this house?” asked Mr. Brown. “If we keep drinking on empty stomachs we will soon be unable to drink at all, and that would be just too bad.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lorna vaguely, “we occasionally glimpse food. That is to say, we used to before this binge started years and years ago. When did it start, anyway?”
“When you brought home a badly painted picture of a cow,” Mr. Bland told his wife. “Before that cow we were fairly respectable, or seemed to be on the surface.”
“And now you haven’t any surface,” said Mr. Brown, “and I’m no longer respectable. Let’s eat.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lorna, returning suddenly from a fit of abstraction. “Fanny, please tell cook to prepare a few solids. It doesn’t matter much what they are as long as they’re composed of food.”
“Is Fanny a servant in this house,” asked Mr. Brown when the passionate maid had departed, “or is she a sort of unofficial observer? At one time you treat her like a servant, at another like a hated rival.”
“She’s a misplaced harlot, if you want my opinion,” declared Lorna, “but I’ve a yen for the wench. She’s so refreshingly depraved she keeps me from growing stale. A respectable servant in this house would soon give notice. Cook drinks and steals and tells dirty stories. Whenever I get lonely I go out to the kitchen and she tells me a new one. She gets them from the iceman, the milkman, and such like. When she has stolen so much of our silver we can’t set the table she gradually gives it back, or rather lends it to us for a while. Name of Blunt. Our occasional gardener is a self-confessed hop-head. Sometimes his hands shake so violently he can dig and weed in half the time it would take a normal man. When he’s full of snow he’s no good at all. Spends his time leaping hedges and playing he’s a butterfly. Want to know his name?”
“What shall I do with these drawers?” asked Mr. Bland, holding the unlovely article up before his wife.
“What’s that?” said Lorna, snapping out of her lyrical outburst.
“Drawers,” replied Mr. Bland.
“I didn’t say they weren’t,” said Lorna. “Do you want me to put them on?”
“No. What shall I do with them?”
Lorna thought deeply.
“I’ve got it,” she said at last. “Get the beard and wrap it up in the drawers, then take the little bundle and tuck it away somewhere where it will be handy. One can never tell when one will need a beard or a pair of drawers. Personally, I never wear either.”
Mr. Bland looked at Mr. Brown. Both men nodded comprehendingly. The lady of the house was bottle dizzy. It was a good way to be. Both drank deeply, then silence settled over the room. Fanny came in with the solids, which were dispatched in a somewhat impromptu and casual manner.
“Does coffee make you sober?” Lorna wanted to know.
“Nothing makes you sober,” said Mr. Brown, “after you’ve drunk as much as we have.”
“Then I’ll drink mine,” she declared. “What hour is it?”
“It’s been late for a long time,” said Mr. Brown.
“How late?”
“Varying stages.”
“Can’t I pin you down?”
“It’s eleven now,” said Mr. Brown, struggling with his watch.
“Do you come with the coffin?” Lorna inquired. “I mean, if we decide to keep the coffin do we have to take you with it?”
