Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 111, No. 4, June 12, 1937

Cadaver’s Revenge by Thomas W. Duncan

It’s serious business when a ghost walks — and in old Ira’s cemetery it proved a grave matter.

“Mr. Koss,” said Jay Rutherford Longworth, ex-con extraordinary, “there’s one branch of our profession that I’ve rather neglected.”

Otis Koss glanced sharply at his companion in the back seat of the sedan.

“Safe cracking?” he inquired.

“No,” said Jay Rutherford Long-worth, gazing out at the flying countryside, “it was a safe cracking rap that put me in Joilet.”

“Fencing?”

“No,” reminisced Jay Rutherford “when I decided to go straight, I set up as a fence. That was in ’Frisco. They gave me a stretch for it in San Quentin. Which just goes to show that honesty don’t pay.”

Otis Koss fingered his long horse face.

“What is it,” he asked finally, “that you ain’t done much with?”

Before replying, Jay Rutherford Longworth took out a cigar from his pocket, scrupulously lit it, and blew fragrant smoke at the ceiling of the sumptuous sedan. He was about fifty, and looked as if he should have been sitting on the Stock Exchange. The last time he was weighed (before he began gaining), the scales groaned to 205.

On this October afternoon his noble bulk was clad in a black broadcloth coat and vest, and pin-striped trousers. A high polish gleamed on his expensive shoes, and a black derby sat on his silvery head. A diamond ring flashed on his little finger, matched by a larger diamond in his fine necktie.

“Mr. Koss,” he said weightily, “the branch of our profession to which I refer is... uh... cemetery work.”

“Cemetery work! But, Jay. There’s a homicide indictment against you right now in Massachusetts.”

Mr. Longworth inhaled the luxurious smoke and blew a couple of rings.

“I’m not,” he said, “speaking of putting people into cemeteries. I’m referring to taking them out.”

“You mean... you mean grave-robbing?”

“Mr. Koss,” said Mr. Longworth reproachfully, “your bluntness of speech is, at times, painful. I prefer to call it... uh... the exhuming of cadavers.”

“Whatever you call it,” growled Mr. Koss, “it ain’t up our alley. It ain’t got no dignity. Con-work is good enough for me.”

Mr. Longworth puffed blissfully for a moment. His pale blue eyes, dreamy with thought, rested on the broad shoulders of Huckins, the chauffeur.

“We,” he murmured, “would do no actual digging, Mr. Koss. Huckins would do that.”

Otis Koss shook his narrow head. He was about thirty-five, brown-skinned, hard-eyed.

“Naw, Jay — let’s not get mixed up with any stiffs. I knew a guy oncet that was in that business. Know what happened to him?”

“Since I wasn’t acquainted with the gentleman, Mr. Koss, how could I know?”

“He got haunted,” said Otis Koss darkly.

Jay Rutherford Longworth’s gold teeth glinted. “You don’t mean to tell me you believe in ghosts?”

“Well—”

“I didn’t think it of you. Besides, the business I have in mind would be no ordinary job of exhuming and selling a cadaver. That, I agree, is for persons with low mental voltage. For muscle-men like Huckins. My thought in this matter is to dig not for a body — but for what is buried with the body.”

“I don’t get it, Jay. I wish you’d talk American for a change instead of that high-toned gab.”

Jay Rutherford Longworth picked up the folded newspaper that he had been reading, before he launched into conversation. Indicating a news story with a pudgy forefinger, he handed the paper to his companion. The item had evidently been written by the small-town correspondent of the metropolitan paper:

Otis Koss tossed aside the newspaper. “I don’t,” he declared, “like the idea of messing around graveyards.”

“Ten grand,” said Jay Rutherford Longworth, “is a lot of money for an hour’s work. There’ll be a full moon tonight.”

“Well, where is this Sioux Creek?” Otis Koss said after a moment.

Jay Rutherford took a map from the pocket of the car.

“I thought so,” he murmured. “It’s directly on our route to Omaha. We should reach Sioux Creek in another hour.”

“Yeah, Jay, but we get there, and what do we do?”

“We dig. I mean, Huckins digs.”

“I know, but how we going to know which is the right grave?”

“Graveyards have sextons. You know — a caretaker. A fellow who cuts grass and digs graves. He should be able to tell us.”

“Maybe he won’t.”

Jay Rutherford patted the bulge that an automatic made in his coat pocket.

“And maybe he will.”

“But look, Jay. We’re likely to get caught. Somebody’s sure to catch us—”

“Mr. Koss,” purred Jay Rutherford, “you forget one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“You forget human nature.”

“What’s human nature got to do with it?”

“Most people — and you’re a good example of this — more or less believe in ghosts. They laugh at the idea in the daylight — but when night comes they stay away from cemeteries. It’ll be dusk in an hour... I think we can work without interruption.”

“It’s bad luck to dig open a grave.”

“Ten grand,” Jay Rutherford smiled, “is a lot of money.”

Some people said that old Ira Slater was crazy.

“He’s a little cracked,” they would say. And then they always added, “But who wouldn’t be — with a job like that.”

On that October day, red sunset was surrendering to red moonrise when old Ira heard a car humming up the lonely hill. From the door of the toolshed he squinted at the yew-lined road. A sedan turned into the cemetery, and he hobbled out to meet it.

The chauffeur, a morose chap with an underslung jaw, switched off the motor, and the car listed as a bulky man stepped to the running board from the back seat.

He grabbed Ira Slater’s dangling right paw and shook it vigorously.

“Mighty glad to know you!” he boomed. “My name’s Jay Rutherford Longworth.”

“Howdy do,” Ira intoned in his cracked old voice. He rubbed his fingers. “My name’s Ira Slater.”

“And this,” Jay Rutherford said, “is Mr. Koss. Mr. Otis Koss.”

“Howdy do,” Ira repeated. “What kin I do for you?”

The fat man smiled and roared heartily, “It’s not a question, Mr. Slater, of what you can do for us. It’s what we’re going to do for you. Isn’t that so, Mr. Koss?”

“Truer words than them was never spoke,” Mr. Koss asserted.

Ira cocked his bony head, clamped together his nutcracker mouth and squinted at the strangers.

“I dunno,” he cackled at last. “Folks that say they’re goin’ to do something for you usually turn around an’ do something to you.”

“Come, come, Mr. Slater,” Jay Rutherford boomed. “Life in a peaceful place like this shouldn’t make you so cynical.”

And he gave Ira Slater’s skinny back a friendly slap between the protruding shoulder blades.

“Don’t do that!” Ira exclaimed. “You keep poundin’ my back an’ you’ll be startin’ my neuralgia!”

Jay Rutherford heavily cleared his throat. “Uh — I take it you’re the sexton here, Mr. Slater.”

“Well,” Ira snapped, “I dunno what I’d be hangin’ round here at this hour for if I wasn’t. I been sexton here for thirty years.”

“You dig the graves, then?”

“There ain’t a remains been put in this ground for more’n a quarter century, that I ain’t dug the grave.”

“Uh — you had a funeral here yesterday, didn’t you?”

Ira stroked his white mustache. “One yesterday and one today. Beats all how folks do die. Yes sir, we buried old Wild Jack Perkins today. He was nigh onto a hundred, an’ as a young feller he came out on these prairies an’ fit the Indians... An’ yesterday — yesterday we buried Nancy Davis. Mrs. Jasper Davis, she was. Banker’s wife... Me an’ her was the same age — sixty-seven...”

Jay Rutherford licked his chops and purred in a rich, confidential voice:

“Mr. Slater. We’ve... uh... got a proposition to make to you.”

“That so?”

“Mr. Slater, how would you like to make fifty dollars?”

“Cash money?”

“Cash money.”

“Never knew a feller to pass up a chance to make a big amount like that. What would I have to do?”

“All you’ll have to do is say three words.”

“Three—?”

Jay Rutherford nodded. “Yes sir, Mr. Slater — all you’ll have to do is to say, ‘There it is’.”

“Dern it!” old Ira exclaimed. “Why don’t you come to the point! There what is?”

The fat man turned and beckoned the chauffeur.

“This,” he said, “is Huckins. Huckins will do the digging.”

“An’ me only three weeks off the rockpile,” Huckins sighed.

“Diggin’. What diggin’?”

Jay Rutherford’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “We want you to take us to this Davis woman’s grave. We want to open it.”

“You want—?”

“You get the idea,” the fat man grinned.

“Why dog your hides!” old Ira shrilled. “You can’t do that!”

“We can’t?”

“ ’Course you can’t! It’s agin the law!”

A low laugh shook Jay Rutherford’s great stomach. “I’d certainly hate to break the law, Mr. Slater, but, on the other hand...”

“Why you want to open Nancy Davis’s grave, anyhow?”

“That’s our affair. All you have to do is point out the grave to us and take your fifty bucks and keep your trap shut.”

Ira pursed his lips. The shadows were deepening; on a far ridge a hound-dog was yelping mournfully. Suddenly the old sexton yapped:

“By glory, I know what you are! You’re body-stealers for some doctor school—!”

“Shut up.”

Ira kept muttering.

“Shut up, I say! We’re not body-snatchers. We’re — gem-dealers.”

“What in tarnation is that?”

Jay Rutherford told him. “As gem-dealers, Mr. Slater, as connoisseurs you might say, it saddens us to think of a beautiful string of pearls being buried from the sight of day. It doesn’t seem right. Those pearls won’t do anyone any good — buried six feet in the ground. So we want to dig them up.”

“You fellers are plumb fools,” Ira shrilled. “I know Jasper Davis well — mebby too well. He’s a mean old blow-hard. Nancy was worth a hundred of the likes of him. That warn’t a ten thousand dollar necklace. Myself, I doubt ye if it cost a hundred — I think it was a fake. If it hadn’t been a fake, old Jasper would’ve never put it into the ground with Nancy.”

“You’re crazy,” Jay Rutherford gruffed. “They’d never printed it in the paper if those pearls were phoney.”

“Mebby I’m crazy and mebby I’m not,” old Ira whined. “But I know one thing — Jasper Davis is a windy old tightwad. Never catch him puttin’ ten thousand in the ground. He said he did, but that was just to fool folks into thinkin’ he loved Nancy more’n he did.”

“I think,” Jay Rutherford said, “we’ll have a look, anyway. That offer still goes. All you have to do is take us to the grave. Easiest fifty bucks you ever made.”

Ira exclaimed, “I wouldn’t open Nancy’s grave fer the president of this land! You can take your fifty dollars and—”

“And what?” inquired Jay Rutherford, slipping an automatic from his pocket.

“Nothin’,” Ira said, with a nervous shrug.

“Now,” the fat man said smoothly, “you’re being sensible. Where’s your spade?”

“It’s there by the toolhouse door.”

“Let’s go. The sooner we’re done, the better.”

“I’ll say so,” Otis Koss put in, glancing round uneasily. “I don’t like this place.”

Ira shuffled toward the toolhouse. The sun had long since fled, and the bright moon poured frosty light into the valleys that fell away from this hilltop burying-ground.

“Give Huckins the spade,” Jay Rutherford Commanded.

“I ain’t in no hurry for it,” Huckins growled.

Ira handed it over. Then he said. “I’d better warn ye...”

“Warn us? What about?”

“There’s a haunt in these parts.”

“A what?”

“Some calls it a ghost. I calls it a haunt. I never seen it, but it’s been seen.”

“Nonsense.”

Very low, Ira replied, “Well, jest thought I’d warn ye. Ain’t no harm in that, I guess... Fact is, that’s why I didn’t take you fellers up on your offer. I ain’t never stayed here after dark. Ain’t money enough to make me...”

“What’s all this crazy talk!” Jay Rutherford demanded.

Otis Koss said uneasily, “Jay, I think we’d be smart to scram. To get on to Omaha.”

“Me too!” exclaimed Huckins.

“Boys,” Jay Rutherford boomed heartily, “don’t let this crazy old fool rattle you.”

Ira sucked his lips. “I know what I know,” he said darkly. “Thirty year ago, old Sam Evans was sexton here. He stayed once after nightfall, an’ he was found the next day. Dead. Not a mark on him. It was the White Man that done it. I took Sam’s job. Been at it thirty year. An’ this is my first time here after nightfall.”

Ira’s voice melted into the hush of the October evening. Far in the distance, down the misty valley, the evening passenger train whistled. A mile away, the hound-dog was still wailing at the moon.

Jay Rutherford tried to laugh. “You don’t expect us to believe that yarn, do you?”

“Don’t expect nothin’ of nobody.” Ira spat into the frost-crisped grass. “Jest warnin’ ye. It’s been seen, as I said. By several people. By Tim Bennett’s boy, fer one. Tim lives a piece down the road.” Ira jerked his head in the direction away from the village. “Jest a few weeks ago Tim’s boy, Charley, was cuttin’ through here after nightfall. He seen it. Said it was a man dressed in white, comin’ through that gate and along the driveway where your car stands. Charley ran. Don’t blame him. You couldn’t get him in here now after nightfall fer nothin’.”

The fat man’s gaze swept the driveway which ran bright in the quicksilver moonlight to the road.

“We — ought to — scram...” Otis Koss mumbled.

Jay Rutherford waved the automatic. “Get going. Where’s the grave?”

Ira Slater shrugged and led the way to a mound of fresh clay in an unmarked lot by the driveway.

“There it is.”

“Start digging,” Jay Rutherford told Huckins.

The chauffeur groaned, spat on his palms, and plunged the spade into the loosely heaped clay.

“I might as well be on the rockpile,” he muttered. “I don’t like this place, anyway... All these dead guys in the ground — well, it puts a man to thinkin’...”

“Never,” Jay Rutherford told him emphatically, “think. You weren’t made for it, Huckins, and you’re apt to strain something.”

The moon rose higher; the silhouettes of the yew trees were sharply cut against the silver-blue sky. In the distant valley, the tiny lights of the village twinkled yellow through the mist that bewitched the autumn night. The grave deepened. Jay Rutherford produced a flask and passed it around.

“No thank ye,” old Ira snapped.

“That hits the spot,” Otis Koss declared, shivering a little. “This place gives me the willies.”

Huckins took a great swig. “Whee — zowie!” he exclaimed, rubbing his stomach. “That’s got a kick like a shot-gun.” He drank again. “Makes me feel like singin’,” he said. “Ever heard me sing, Jay?”

“My name,” said Jay Rutherford Longworth with great dignity, “is Mr. Longworth. And if you ever start singing, you’re fired. If I want a canary, I’ll get one in a cage.”

“That was me!” declared Huckins. “A canary in a cage! The boys at Michigan City said they never heard such a voice.”

“Dig!” ordered Jay Rutherford. “Quit leaning on that spade. Dig!”

“Aw right, aw right! But it just goes to show how a guy with talent can get bum breaks.”

Ira stood silent at the edge of the grave, shrewdly observing his captors. Jay Rutherford did not drink; his automatic never wavered from the old sexton. Otis Koss kept twisting his head and nervously snapping his fingers. Then, from a patch of timber-land off to the east, a long wail ascended to the frosty moon. Tremulous and ghostly, it floated over the graveyard like the lament of a soul forever lost.

Koss gave an involuntary shudder; even Jay Rutherford started. Huckins stopped digging.

“What was that?”

Ira’s laugh was a short cackle. “Don’t you fellers worry about that. That’s just a coyote over in Johnson’s timber. That can’t hurt you.”

“A sound like that,” Huckins said hoarsely, “takes all the music out of a man.”

Ira cackled again. “The White Man don’t howl. Them that has seen him says he walks quiet, mostly.”

“You crazy old coot!” Jay Rutherford boomed. “Shut up about that White Man. And Huckins, you dig faster. We can’t stay here all night.”

“Ain’t late yet,” Ira observed. “Ain’t more’n a few minutes after supper time, right now.”

The group lapsed into a silence broken only by the thud of Huckin’s spade. Ira’s jaws worked in a chewing motion. He knew he was very likely to die. After these men had finished, they would probably put a bullet into his carcass. Dead men didn’t talk. Perhaps they would roll his lifeless body into the grave and cover it. He would never be found; no one would think to look into the grave. The cold smell of raw earth entered his nostrils and he shivered.

The spade clanged against something solid. Huckins straightened, kneeding the small of his back.

“There’s a steel bell coverin’ the coffin,” he said.

“It’s goin’ to be a job,” Ira yapped, “hoisting that coffin out. We’ll have to get ropes from the shed—” His gaze flicked to the yew trees that lined the edge of the cemetery. Along the road, still a good distance away, something white glimmered in the moonlight. “Let me get into that grave,” Ira added. “I think there’s a handle on that bell that we can hook ropes through.”

He eased himself into the grave, then said dryly, pointing toward the road:

“Look there, would you... Looks like a man all in white.”

Ira stooped and in the damp darkness ran his hand round the inner base of the grave. At last his fingers contacted what they had been seeking — a small canvas bundle. He unwrapped it and cautiously peered over the pile of earth.

Ira said, “He’s comin’...”

The figure was turning in at the gate. From the top of his cap to the bottom of his trousers, he was a striding study in white. The moonlight glistened on him.

“That’s him, all right,” Ira cackled.

Jay Rutherford Longworth was beginning to tremble. His automatic still pointed at Ira. Huckins mumbled incoherently and scrambled out of the grave. Otis Koss was shaking like a whipped dog.

“Koss!” the fat man ordered. “Take hold of yourself.”

Suddenly, Ira pointed his left fore-finger at the approaching figure and uttered a long screech.

“My God! — I can’t stand it!” Otis Koss gasped. The fat man gripped his wrist. With a jerk Koss tore himself loose, spinning his companion half round, and plunged off through the moonlight. Instantly, Jay Rutherford aimed his automatic at the white figure.

A spurt of red, accompanied by the report of a gun, came from the grave. Another followed, then a third.

The man with the automatic crumpled heavily to earth. Koss’s arms shot upward, and he stumbled forward on his face; while Huckins, running for freedom, whirled, let out a yell, and dropped.

Ira climbed from the grave. He did not seem afraid of the white figure trotting toward him. Indeed, he spoke to it:

“Evenin’, Tim Bennett. Glad to see you. Fact is, I was never so glad to see anyone—”

“What—?”

Ira explained. And he added, “Your wife came by here this afternoon and told me she was baking fresh bread. She said she’d send you down with a loaf this evenin’ if I’d wait here, and when these fellers came, I remembered that.” Ira reached out and took the loaf of bread from Bennett’s hand. “And I got to thinkin’. You being a painter — workin’ today painting Jed Sullivan’s house — I figured you’d still have on your white overalls...”

“But,” Tim Bennett exclaimed, “you say you didn’t have a gun. And—” He pointed at the revolver in Ira’s hand.

“Uh-huh. You see, I had ’em open Wild Jack Perkins’s grave instead of Nancy’s. Wild Jack used to be an Indian fighter, and he got the idee from them — of havin’ his weapon buried with him. Last week, on his death-bed, he told me he was afraid his relatives would think it a fool idee, an’ he give me his old six-shooter. He made me promise to wrap it in canvas, an’ put it on top of his coffin before I filled his grave. Mighty glad I kept that promise...”

Tim Bennett exclaimed, “Ira, you may be crazy, but if you are, you’re crazy like a fox. It was pretty smart for you to open Wild Jack’s grave instead of Nancy’s.”

“I wouldn’t have opened hers, nohow,” Ira declared. “Not if they’d shot me for refusin’. Not even the president of this here country could make me disturb the rest of my twin sister, Nancy.”