Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 16 Skeletons From My Closet

…Said Jack The Ripper by ROBERT ARTHUR

Two weeks before the annual opening, Atlantic Beach Park was a ghost town by night, wrapped in shadowed silence. A mist riding in from the ocean twined itself around the Ferris wheel, hid the deserted roller coaster, made the street lights into shimmering yellow blobs.

Inside the one big room of the rickety building that housed Pop Dillon's Chamber of Horrors — The Waxworks Museum Supreme — a dusty bulb on the end of a long drop cord gave a little light, but left the corners full of shadows that seemed to crouch as if about to spring. A lifetime in the carnival business had made Pop, a wizened little man, a night owl. Now he was getting his assortment of murderers, cutthroats, criminals and victims ready for the coming season — mostly a matter of brushing off the winter's dust or mending a few moth holes in the costumes.

Humming tunelessly, Pop adjusted the flowing necktie of Holmes, the Chicago murder king whose odd hobby had been to cut up pretty young women in his basement. Then he went on to John Dillinger.

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream," Pop sang in a monotone to himself, "merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream… Hello, Mr. Dillinger. You're looking fine. But what a condition to let your gun get into. Rusty!"

Dillinger didn't answer. Sometimes he did; sometimes he didn't. It depended on his mood. Pop was always willing to chat when one of his wax figures seemed in the mood, and he had had a number of interesting conversations with some of them, such as the ones he had with Jack the Ripper, who was naturally boastful. Others, though, never spoke a word — they were the silent types. Pop never tried to force them to talk — even a wax dummy had a right to privacy, he figured.

Pop was dusting Jack the Ripper, who with knife in hand kneeled over a female victim, a fiendish smile on his face, when he heard the front door open.

"Pop!" It was Hendryx, the beat cop, a friendly, burly young fellow who came forward into the circle of light as Pop turned. "Got something to tell you."

"Yeah," Pop said eagerly, curiously.

"Want to warn you. It happened just a couple hours ago."

"Yeah?"

"Your old pal Burke Morgan escaped. On the way to the Shore Beach Penitentiary — "

"Morgan escaped?" Pop's creased features registered dismay. "But he's going to the electric chair at midnight."

"Was going."

"You mean he's not?"

"He had the nerve to petition the Governor to postpone his execution. Said he wasn't well enough to be executed. Imagine that. He'd been in the prison hospital with something or other. What do you think of that for nerve?"

Pop could only shake his head.

"Of course the Governor said no. But the way it turned out, that didn't make any difference, far as Burke's getting out. So I thought I'd better warn you."

"That's bad," Pop said. "His escaping."

"It was all set. Then things start happening. The Governor he orders Morgan transferred to Shore Beach Pen when they find the chair up at the state pen's not working."

"But you said he wasn't going to be electrocuted — "

"He got away. Four guards in the prison van, and he got away. A big truck comes along, smacks into the van and knocks it over."

"Oh, that's very bad."

"They had to cut Morgan out of that van with acetylene torches. And these two guys that done it had machine guns — that's the way I heard it."

"Oh, he must be caught," Pop moaned. "My whole summer'll be ruined if he isn't."

"I wanted to warn you. They think he's wounded. And that's not going to help his disposition none. Well, I got to be on my way. Just wanted to tell you so you'd be on the lookout."

"My whole summer," Pop said dolefully. "Look over here, Hendryx, at this new display. It'll be a great drawing card, but only if Morgan is electrocuted."

"Should be going," Hendryx said as he followed Pop to a realistic electric chair set on a platform in the middle of the room. Then he asked, "What's the pitch, Pop?"

"Why, down in the workroom I'm making a wax figure of Burke Morgan. It's going to sit in that electric chair. Nice one, isn't it? And you know I got it quite reasonable from that theatrical supply firm down on Race Street."

"That girl holding the tray. That's supposed to be Alice Johnson, isn't it?"

"And sitting at the table is Pretty Boy Thomas. It's the same table he was eating at when Morgan stepped up to the window of the Briny Spray Oyster House down by the boardwalk and shot him because of their little argument."

"That sure looks like Pretty Boy, Pop. He sure looks alive — which of course he ain't."

"I'm going to call this exhibit, 'Burke Morgan, the Quiz Winner, Electrocuted as His Victims Watch.'"

"Good idea, Pop. But now I gotta get going. Just wanted to warn you. Case you hear anybody trying to get in, you'd better call us quick."

"That Burke Morgan's a vain one. Being on that quiz program just blew him up all the more. Always boasting how much he read on Crime and Criminals, so having that subject on the quiz was a natural for him. Just the same he did come to me to talk about my boarders."

"That's Morgan all right," Hendryx said.

"You know what he said to me? He said other criminals were illiterate and that's why they were always caught. And he tells me that he had killed twelve men — one whole dozen — and had never even been suspected."

"Okay, Pop. Just you be careful."

Hendryx left. For a moment Pop looked gloomy as he walked over to the carefully set table where a handsome, curly-haired figure sat as if eating. Pop began to dust the dishes and silver and rearrange them.

"That's life, Pretty Boy," he sighed. "Get a nice exhibit worked out and then Burke Morgan has to escape. But maybe I can save it yet — reenact the murder maybe, when Morgan shot you just as you were eating oysters. What was that quarrel about between you two, anyway?"

He waited, but Pretty Boy did not answer. Probably Pretty Boy felt upset over the escape, too. Naturally, he'd rather have been part of an exhibit showing Morgan electrocuted than of one that re-created his own violent death.

Pop turned to the wax figure of Alice Johnson, a slender girl with dark brown hair and rather wistful eyes, the girl who had witnessed the murder. He straightened Alice's apron, made sure the tray was firm. Then he fluffed up her hair. "There," he said, "you look pretty, Alice."

He thought he heard her say, "Thank you," but he couldn't be sure. Alice was still extremely shy and hardly ever talked above a whisper.

Alice looked so pretty that Pop could not restrain himself from saying, "If only you hadn't screamed, Alice, Morgan might not have noticed you and shot you. But there, don't look so upset, I shouldn't have brought it up. I know it's a painful memory, but you'll be happy here with us, Alice, really you will. This summer you'll get to see thousands of new people, and they'll all admire you, you'll see. And after all, it was because you screamed that Morgan got caught."

Pop tactfully left Alice to recover her composure and went on dusting his way toward the darkest corner of the room. There he stopped. The figure standing there was out of place.

"Now, Burke Morgan," he said reprovingly, "what are you doing in this corner?"

"All right, Pop," the figure said softly. "Take it easy, don't make me kill you."

Pop's expression became severe. His figures were allowed to talk, but they weren't permitted to threaten him.

"Don't talk like that, Morgan," he said, "or I'll put you in a dark closet for a week. Besides, you're not finished yet. So you just go right back down to the workshop."

The waxworks figure stepped forward, blue-steel glinting in its hand.

"This is me, Burke Morgan," the soft, curiously cultured voice said. "You don't really think one of your dummies is going to start talking to you?"

"Of course they do," Pop told him, realizing that this Burke Morgan was flesh and blood, not wax. Apparently, he had slipped into the Chamber of Horrors to hide. "Almost all of them talk to me. Jack the Ripper and Billy the Kid are especially good talkers. They're the boastful type. Only Jesse James never says a word. I think Jesse James is angry because folks don't pay him much attention any more."

"Break the connection, you're talking too much." Morgan stepped forward, patted Pop's pockets, then put away his own gun. "If you want to be around to open this nightmare factory next month, you'd better do just as I say."

"Oh, I will," Pop promised. "So will everybody here. We don't want to get hurt. Most everybody here except me has been killed once already, and that's enough."

"The cops have this place surrounded. And I have a flesh wound in my shoulder. I must get to the hiding place my friends have waiting for me. That's where you come in."

Pop shook his head doubtfully. "There just isn't any way. The police will spot that prison suit right away."

"But what is the one thing they won't notice tonight?" Burke Morgan almost purred. "Another cop. You have a half dozen dummies here wearing police uniforms. I want one of those uniforms."

"Why, that's very clever." Pop cocked his head and listened. "They all think it's very clever, Burke. Jack the Ripper says you're a very artful dodger."

"Never mind Jack the Ripper. A man has to have brains and imagination to stay on top in any business, Pop, and I have them. That's why I'm here now and not up in the state pen waiting to walk through that little green door. Now help me off with this — My shoulder! You'll have to cut this jacket off me."

"Oh, I don't want to do that! Why, if I can get that suit off without cutting it, I can still have an exhibit. I can show the very prison suit you escaped in, the night you were to be electrocuted."

"Pop, don't get me angry. The doc at the prison said getting angry was bad for me, so I'm being gentle with you. I don't care if twenty-five years of running this private morgue has scrambled your gears so you think your dummies talk to you, but just don't play games with me."

"Oh, they don't just talk to me," Pop explained. "They talk to each other too. You should have heard them talking the night you killed Pretty Boy and Alice Johnson, right over by the boardwalk. My, they were excited — Oh, I'm sorry. I'll cut that coat right off you and I won't say another word."

"Pop!" The word was like a pistol shot. "Someone's rattling the front door!"

"Probably Hendryx came back." Pop looked toward the door. "He's the only one it could be."

"Get rid of him!" The tall man with the strange light blue eyes slipped behind a group of figures at a card table. One of the figures was Jesse James, and behind him Howard, his slayer, was creeping up with a drawn revolver. At the card table Morgan froze into immobility, appeared to be a spectator.

"I'll stand here until he's gone," Morgan whispered. "Remember, I have you covered. The wrong word and you and the cop'll be exhibits in this three-dimensional cemetery."

"I'll be careful," Pop promised. "Everybody, you must promise not to make a sound. Especially you, Billy the Kid!" He raised his voice. "Is that you, Hendryx?"

The burly young cop came through the door.

"Just wanted to warn you again, Pop. Morgan was seen entering the amusement park an hour ago. We're going to search the whole place inch by inch. We got orders to shoot to kill."

"Oh, please don't shoot him! If you catch him alive, he'll still go to the electric chair and then I can use my new exhibit."

There was a tiny sound, a brief movement. Young Hendryx stared toward the group of dummies around the card table.

"Pop, one of those dummies moved!"

"Oh, they couldn't have! I made them promise not to."

But Hendryx already had his gun out, moving toward the card table tableau. He had taken no more than two steps when the muzzle flare of a.38 flickered shadows over the wax faces of a score of dummy figures, making them seem to grimace in excitement and horror. Hendryx grunted as the bullet hit him, gave a long gurgling sound, and pitched forward on his face.

Pop stood very still.

"You'd better be leaving, Morgan," he said. "Even if the police outside didn't hear that shot, they'll be here soon, because they're searching the whole amusement park. They'll find Hendryx and they'll find you, because there isn't any place here to hide either of you."

"Oh, yes there is," Burke Morgan told him. "So I'm staying. First, lay two or three dummies in police uniforms on top of this flatfoot. If anybody asks, they're all going back to the workshop for repairs."

"That might work, yes indeed, it might," Pop agreed. "Dr. Crippen, the English poisoner, says he thinks it will work. But what about you?"

"Don't worry about me, Pop. You forget — I have imagination! So when the police get here, I'll be ready. And you won't give me away or you'll get what Hendryx got. Now get busy piling those dummies on him."

"Yes, Morgan, I will. And I'll not breathe a word to the police. That goes for all the rest of you." Pop raised his voice. "If the police come, not a word about this, do you hear?"

He waited, then nodded.

"They've promised, Morgan," he said. "Even Billy the Kid has promised. For my sake. They won't say a word."

"Keep your eyes open, Pop," the police inspector called back as he headed for the door. "Blow that whistle I gave you if you hear anything. We'll come running. Morgan's around some place."

"I will, Inspector," Pop Dillon answered, staying carefully in front of the seated figure in the electric chair — a figure with a black cloth over its face, with a metal plate clamped to its skull, with straps holding its wrists and ankles in place.

"'Night now," Inspector Mansfield said and went out, following his men.

As the door closed, the figure in the electric chair stirred. Burke Morgan lifted the false bands that seemed to bind his arms and legs. He pushed back the metal bowl on his head and lifted the black cloth from his face. He winced as his stiffened shoulder protested.

"Seemed like they were here an hour," he said. "Good thing they were in a hurry, my shoulder was getting pretty bad. But, you see, they never gave me a second look."

"Oh, it was very smart," Pop agreed. "But now what can you do? If you go out even in a police uniform, they'll recognize you; there are so many of them."

"I don't think so. But anyhow I'm going to stay here for a couple of hours until they move to another part of the park. If anyone comes back, we'll work the same trick. I'm going to take it easy right here in this chair, and you can sit there, in your old rocker. We'll wait together, Pop."

Pop only nodded. It seemed to him he had heard Jack the Ripper ask, "And what does he plan to do about you when he leaves, Pop?" But he didn't feel he should pass the question on to Burke Morgan.

"Turn out that light," Morgan directed. "They know you're staying here and that you can't sleep with the light on."

Obediently, Pop pulled the cord. The tall, thin man swore.

"Pretty Boy Thomas and the girl!" he said. "Their faces are shining in the dark!"

"Phosphorus," Pop told him as he settled into his old rocker. "They're supposed to be ghosts, sort of, watching you die. You should hear the spiel I worked up. It's very dramatic."

"That's enough gab. I could get sore about that exhibit idea of yours, but I won't."

Pop leaned back comfortably. Many a night he had drowsed until daylight in his old rocker. He watched Morgan trying to relax in the rigidity of the prop electric chair, and knew that Morgan's shoulder must be getting worse now — a lot worse. Morgan began to twitch uneasily.

"The laddie is suffering for a drug. Morphine, I suspect." That was Dr. Crippen, whispering in his ear.

"He's got it bad." That was Dillinger, making the observation in a cool, professional manner. "They probably gave him a shot when they sprung him, and now he needs another. His nerves probably feel like copper angleworms inside his skin."

Pop agreed. He'd seen too many addicts in the carny business not to know the symptoms. Burke Morgan was suffering. But Pop couldn't do anything about that. He closed his eyes. His breathing became deep and regular. In a few minutes he was snoring a little.

The tall man in the chair on the little platform listened to the snores and scowled. The pain in his shoulder had settled down to a burning sensation interrupted by fleeting stabs of pain. He could feel the sweat standing out on his forehead. His hands twitched. He wanted to yell, curse, make a break for it, shoot his way through the police outside.

But he did nothing. That was how a man got himself killed — through acting impulsively. He'd killed Pretty Boy Thomas impulsively, and they had caught him. Now he settled himself in the chair, determined to be still, and he was. He pin-pointed his concentration on getting through the night.

He had been here, in Pop Dillon's waxworks museum, many times. Now, in the darkness broken only by the faintest of light coming from a street lamp outside the windows, he could feel the wax figures of cutthroats, footpads, killers and victims all around him. He could feel them almost on the point of moving, of speaking. No wonder Pop, after so many years, could hear the dummies talk. In the silence, Burke Morgan found himself waiting for a voice to break the quiet.

"Morgan…" He could almost swear that he had heard his name spoken. "Burke Morgan…" He had heard it! He looked toward Pop. By the faint light he saw Pop asleep in his chair, lips parted as he snored, chest rising and falling unevenly.

Burke Morgan licked his lips. It was the craving for the white stuff. He shouldn't have taken that first shot when they got him out of the prison van. But it had helped. Now he'd turn off his imagination. It took imagination to have the electric chair gimmicked by a bribed electrician, to figure on being transferred, to plan a getaway, to carry it out in spite of everything going wrong. But he mustn't let his imagination get away from him now. He could wait it out. He had before.

The silence stretched out and out, like a rubber band being pulled until it had to break, but wouldn't. He clamped his teeth together and gripped the arms of the chair to still the shaking of his hands.

"Burke Morgan…" He heard it plainly this time, but he knew it was a sound in his mind, not in his ears. The phosphorescent face of Pretty Boy Thomas seemed to be smiling at him. "How does it feel to be waiting for them to pull the switch at midnight? How does it feel to know you only have a couple of minutes left?"

He almost answered before he realized it. Then he clamped his lips shut. That was how you went mad, talking back to voices that weren't there. Again the silence stretched out to the breaking point.

"He doesn't know." It was a girl's gentle voice. He looked at Alice Johnson and could swear he saw her lips move. "Tell him he's just dreaming he's free and he'll understand."

"That's all this is, Burke." And this time he knew he could hear Pretty Boy's voice. "You're dreaming of us. It's almost midnight and you need the white stuff bad and they've strapped you into the electric chair. You can't bear to die so you're dreaming that you've escaped, dreaming you're going to get away. But you aren't."

Burke Morgan closed his mouth and shut off the answer he had almost made. He'd heard about this business of imagining you were free just before they pulled the switch on you. The mind escaping from reality, they called it. But this was real. This was no dream.

He bit his lips until the blood came, and the faces of Pretty Boy Thomas and the girl ceased to be alive, became mere wax masks again.

Silence, stretching, stretching -

"Almost midnight," Alice Johnson said, and Morgan jumped.

"You'll be joining us in a minute," Pretty Boy said. "Listen, you can hear the big clock striking midnight now."

He did not have to listen. The first stroke of the big tower clock set the air to vibrating, and it was the sound of a knell tolling, tolling for him.

"It'll be over soon." Pretty Boy's voice was almost gentle. "On the sixth stroke they'll throw the switch and three thousand volts will crash into your body and burn your nerves and short circuit your brain. Listen, there's the fourth stroke — and the fifth — "

Burke Morgan seemed to hear a whole chorus of voices whispering the count together. Four — five — six -

He tried to shut them out, shut out the clanging clock, shut out everything. But he could not shut out the venomous hiss of electric current surging into the chair. He could not ignore the great shower of sparks that flamed around his head, his hands, his feet, the smell of burning…

Burke Morgan leaped up wildly. He gave a single scream, and it seemed to him a hundred throats echoed it. Then silence, darkness, nothingness.

Pop Dillon settled back into his old rocker. There would be photographers and reporters there early and he wanted to be on hand for them. There would be columns in the newspapers tomorrow about The Chamber of Horrors. Oh, it would be a fine summer. Now the police had finally gone, taking with them the bodies of Burke Morgan and poor Officer Hendryx, two for the morgue who would eventually be immortalized in wax in the Chamber of Horrors.

"Pop." It was Pretty Boy Thomas' voice — yes, it was. "That was clever, Pop. Even to me it sounded like my own voice."

"And mine did to me." That would be Alice Johnson speaking in her shy, soft voice.

"Well, after all, I was a pretty good caster," Pop answered modestly, but pleased by the praise. "I was one for all of ten years, in a carny show. You know what a caster is? A ventriloquist. Yeah. Carny people use that short name."

"You handled him well." It was Jack the Ripper this time. The voices were no louder than the rustling of mice in the woodwork, or the fluttering of curtains at the windows. To anyone but Pop, they would have seemed just that. "I was wondering if you were going to try that shower of sparks effect you worked out to give the crowds a thrill, taking them by surprise when you put your foot on a button beside the platform."

"Yes," Pop answered. "I thought it would startle him long enough for me to run to the door and call for help."

"Of course you didn't know it was his heart that had put him in the prison hospital," Dr. Crippen, the poisoner, said with professional detachment. "But the combination of a craving for drugs, tremendous tension, shock and a bad heart killed him. Right there in your electric chair."

"He got what was coming to him," Dillinger growled. "You should let me have real bullets in my gun and I'd a saved you the trouble."

"This way was better," Billy the Kid said. "We'll have a great summer. The crowds will be flocking in."

"They'll be flocking in to see me, not you old dusty, moth-eaten has-beens!" a new voice sneered, and a sudden, shocked silence filled the big room.

Pop Dillon's eyes opened wide in surprise, and looked at the figure of Burke Morgan, which he had brought up and seated in the electric chair for the benefit of the photographers.

"Is that any way to talk, Morgan?" Pop asked severely. "Hardly dead yet and boasting already?"

"It's true and you know it," Burke Morgan said. "They'll mob the place to see the electric chair I died in, right at midnight", just when my sentence said I was to die."

Pop was about to answer when Jack the Ripper spoke up.

"Let him talk all he wants," Jack said. "Just don't answer him and he'll get tired of being left out. There's no point in being concerned over who draws the crowds, because what's good for one of us is good for all of us. Why, think what would happen if Pop ever had to go out of business. We'd be sold, melted down — killed."

There was a little murmur all over the room, a stirring, a rustle of anxiety, like the creak of old woodwork settling.

"Oh, I'm good for a long time yet," Pop told them all. "But I want you to be on your best behavior this summer and put on the finest show we ever had."

"We will… We will… We certainly will…" the whispers assured Pop. He closed his eyes with satisfaction. They were a good troupe to work with. It was going to be a fine summer.

As he drifted off to sleep, he could hear the rustle of tiny voices rise and fall in the darkness. All of them were now busily discussing the evening's events.

Even Jesse James.