Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 31, June 1946

The Rival Dummy by Ben Hecht

From the dossier of Ben Hecht: in rough chronological order his vocations and avocations include his being a child-prodigy violinist, a circus acrobat, a theatre owner, a reporter, a novelist, a foreign correspondent, a columnist, a newspaper publisher, a playwright, a scenarist, and a motion picture producer. In a phrase: the background of one of the great storytellers of our time.

“The Rival Dummy” is not among Ben Hecht’s most famous stories. Indeed, it is not well-known at all. Yet it is richly representative of Mr. Hecht’s highly individualistic talent: to paraphrase Mr. Hecht himself, it is strange, weird, and crazy; partly because it tells the story of “the strangest, weirdest, craziest man in New York” — Gabbo the Great, the world’s screwiest ventriloquist.

“The Rival Dummy” belongs to that rare category of fiction which can only be described as “off the trail.” It will remind you, although in an entirely different way, of Marc Connelly’s “Coroner’s Inquest,” in EQMM, issue of September 1944. These unconventional, unorthodox little classics — so odd, so off the beaten track, that they are literally outré — are out-of-season delicacies calculated to stimulate the taste-buds of those fans whose appetites are somewhat jaded by run-of-the-meal murders. Yes, here is murder out of the ordinary, murder out of mania, murder outré...

I was dining in a place where vaudeville “artists” congregate to gossip and boast, when my friend Joe Ferris, the booking agent, pointed to a stocky little man with a gray toupee, alone at a table, and said:

“There is, I think, the strangest, weirdest, craziest man in New York.”

I looked a second time, and noted, despite this identification, nothing more unusual than the aforesaid gray toupee, a certain bewildered and shifty manner about the eyes, and a pair of nervous sensitive hands. He reminded me — this solitary diner — of some second-rate Hungarian fiddler worn out with poverty, alcohol, and egotism.

“That,” said Joe Ferris, “is the man who ten years ago used to be known as Gabbo the Great — the world’s most famous ventriloquist. I guess he heard me” — the booking agent lowered his voice — “but it doesn’t matter. He’ll pretend he didn’t. We’re not supposed to know who he is, you know. That’s what the toupee is for. Disguise. Mad — madder than a cuckoo. It gives me the shivers just to look at him.

“I’ll tell you his story,” continued Ferris, “and maybe you can figure it out. That’s more than I can. But being a newspaper man, you won’t call me a liar. I hate to tell stories to people who are always certain that anything they never heard of before is a lie.

“This particular yarn” — Ferris smiled — “began way back before the war. He came over from Belgium. Gabbo. That’s where a good percentage of the best performers come from. God knows why. Jugglers, contortionists, trapeze acts, strong men, and all that kind of stuff. Belgium and Lithuania sometimes.

“I booked Gabbo when he first landed. The best all-around ventriloquist that ever played the big time — if I do say so. And nuts, of course. But you got to expect that from the talent. I never see a first-rate act that wasn’t at least half nutty.

“The first time I met him I ask him what his last name is.

“ ‘Gabbo what?’ I ask.

“ ‘Gabbo the Great,’ is the answer. And then he adds very seriously, ‘I was born Great.’

“I thought at first this was the foreign equivalent for a gag. But there was less humor about Gabbo than a dead mackerel. He used to sign his letters G. G. Imagine. And — to give you a rough idea of what kind of a loon this baby was — he always opened his act with the Marseillaise.

“He used to come out in the middle of it, stand at attention till it was finished, and then, in a low, embarrassed voice, announce: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen: I have the honor to present to you tonight the world’s most gifted ventriloquist — Gabbo the Great.’

“And he would take a bow. That’s pretty cuckoo, ain’t it? But it always went big. You’d be surprised at what an audience will swallow and applaud.

“Well, the first time I came to the conclusion that there was something definitely cockeyed about Gabbo was when I called on him one night after his performance at the palace. It was up in his room at the hotel. He’d just got in and was taking his dummy out of its black case. It had velvet lining in it, this case, and was trimmed in black and gold like a magician’s layout.

“Let me tell you about this dummy — if I can. You’ve seen them. One of those red-cheeked, round-headed marionettes with popping, glassy eyes and a wide mouth that opens and shuts.

“Well, Jimmy — that was the name of this wooden-headed thing — was no different from the rest of them. That is, you wouldn’t think so to look at it. That thing haunts me, honest to God. I can still see its dangling legs with the shoes painted on its feet and — let’s forget about it. Where was I?

“Oh, yes. I go up to his room and stand there talking to him, and just as I’m making some remark or other, he sits Jimmy up on the bed, and all of a sudden turns to him — or it or whatever you want to call the thing — and starts holding a conversation.

“ ‘I suppose,’ says Gabbo, angry as blazes and glaring at this dummy, ‘I suppose you’re proud of yourself, eh? After the way you acted tonight?’

“And Jimmy, the dummy, so help me, answers back in a squeaky voice, ‘Aw, go soak your head. Listen to who’s talkin’.’

“Then this nutty ventriloquist speaks up kind of heatedly. ‘I’m talkin’,’ he says. ‘And I’ll ask you to listen to what I have to say. You forgot your jokes tonight, and if it happens again you get no milk.’

“Well, I thought it was a gag. You know, a bit of clowning for my benefit. So I stand by, grinning like an ape, although it don’t look funny at all, while Gabbo pours a glass of milk and, opening Jimmy’s mouth, feeds it to him. Then he turns to me, like I was a friend of the family, and says coolly: ‘This Jimmy is getting worse and worse. What I wanted to see you about, Mr. Ferris, is taking his picture off the billing. I want to teach him a lesson.’

“I’ve had them before — cuckoos, I mean — and it didn’t surprise me. Much. They come pretty queer in vaudeville.

“Remind me to tell you some time about the prima donna I had who used to come on with a dagger and throw it on the stage. If it stuck, landed on its point, she’d go on with the act and sing. If it didn’t she wouldn’t. Walk right off.

“She was pretty expert at tossing the old dagger, so it usually landed right — they ain’t ever too crazy. And on account of the dagger always landing right, I never find out what it’s all about for weeks. Until one night she up cold and walks out on herself. On an opening night at the Palace, too, where she’s being featured. And when I come galloping back, red in the face to ask her what the hell, she answers me very haughty: ‘Go ask the dagger. He tell you.’

“Well, that’s another story, and not so good, either. About this night in Gabbo’s room, as I was saying. I took in Gabbo’s little act with the dummy, and said nothing.

“But I started making a few inquiries the next day, and I find out plenty. I find out that this nutty give-and-take with the dummy is just a regular routine for Gabbo. That he keeps up a more or less steady conversation with the dummy like he was a kid brother. And not only that, but that this idiotic dummy is the only human being — or whatever you call him — that Gabbo ever says more than hello to. Barring me, of course.

“Look” — and Ferris snorted — “can you imagine him sitting at that table now and looking at me and pretending he doesn’t know me? And, what’s more, that I don’t know him? On account he’s got a nine-dollar toupée on. Well, that’s part of the story, and I’ll come to it.

“The way I figured it at the time — and I may be wrong — was that Gabbo was such an egotist that he could only talk to himself. You know, there’s lots of hoofers, for instance, who won’t watch anybody but themselves dance. They stand in front of a mirror — for diversion, mind you — and do their stuff. And applaud it. That’s vaudeville for you.

“So I figured Gabbo that way. That he was so stuck on himself he got a big kick out of talking to himself. That’s what he was doing, of course, when he held these powwows with Jimmy.

“As you can imagine, it kind of interested me. I got so I’d always try to drop around Gabbo’s dressing room whenever I had time, just to catch this loony business with the dummy. I didn’t think it exactly funny, you know, and it never made me laugh. I guess it was just morbid curiosity on my part. Anyway, I sort of become part of the family.

“The fights they used to have — Gabbo and this crazy dummy; fighting all the time. Usually about the act. Gabbo sore as the devil at Jimmy if anything went wrong with the turn — if one of the gags missed fire, for instance, he’d accuse him of stalling, laying down on the job, and honest to God, once he sailed into the damn thing because he was sure it wasn’t getting enough sleep. Believe me or not, they were as quarrelsome as a team of hoofers.

“And after I got used to these spats — you know you can get used to anything — I got to thinking of Jimmy almost the way Gabbo did. I got to imagining it was him answering back — squealing, kidding, and swearing. And not Gabbo talking with his stomach — or whatever it is ventriloquists talk with.

“But with all this fighting between them, you could see that Gabbo had a soft spot for Jimmy. He fed him milk. There was a can or something fitted up inside. That’s where the milk went.

“For instance, just to show you the pretty side of the picture, about three months after I change the billing and take Jimmy’s name off the one-sheets, Gabbo arrives in my office with a demand that I put the picture back and the name too, in twice as big lettering as before.

“And one other time he comes to me, Gabbo does, and says Jimmy isn’t getting enough money. Well, as you can imagine, this sounds a bit phoney. There’s such a thing as carrying a gag too far, is my first reaction. But so help me, he meant it. And he won’t go on with the act unless I come through.

“Well, I learned long before that it don’t pay to win arguments with the talent. It’s worse than winning an argument with your own wife. Costs you more.

“So I finally control my temper and asks, ‘How much of a raise does Jimmy want?’

“ ‘Five dollars a week more,’ says Gabbo. And Gabbo was pulling down four hundred dollars for the act; so you can see the whole thing was on the square — asking a raise for Jimmy, I mean. Then he explains to me that he has been paying Jimmy ninety-five dollars per week right along, and he wants to make it an even hundred because Jimmy has been working very hard and so on.

“So much for that. Here’s where the plot thickens. About three weeks or so after this conference, I get wind of the fact that Gabbo has fallen for a dame; and that the thing has become quite a joke among the talent.

“I can hardly believe my ears. Gabbo never looked at a dame ever since he was on the circuit. The loneliest, stuck-up professor I’d ever known. He used to walk around like Kaiser Wilhelm. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar. And with a mustache. Don’t look now — he’s shaved it off. Part of the disguise. But in those days it was his pride and joy.

“Well, the next thing I heard about his love’s young dream is from Gabbo himself in person. He comes back to New York, and comes walking into the office with the information that he is adding a woman to his act; Mile. Rubina. I look at him and say, ‘What for, for the love of Pete? What do you need a jane in the act for, and why Rubina?’

“ ‘For the water,’ he answers. ‘To bring on the glass of water which I drink. And take it off.’ And he scowls at me as if to say, ‘Do you want to make anything out of it?’ And when I nod sort of dumbly, he goes on: ‘She is willing to join me for a hundred dollars per week.’

“Well, this is pretty nuts. Rubina was a bowlegged wench working in a juggling act. Fetched plates and Indian clubs for Allen and Allen. And worth all of fifty cents a year as talent. Not even a looker. But go argue with Gabbo. I tried a little taffy about his going over so much better alone — that is, with his pal Jimmy to help him out. But he waves his hand at me, pulls his mustache, and begins to jump up and down with excitement.

“So I agree, and he then becomes the gentleman. He’ll stand for a fifty dollar cut in his salary — that is twenty-five dollars out of his take and twenty-five out of Jimmy’s. That’s the way he puts it. And I should kick in with the other fifty for Rubina’s graft.

“That’s how this Rubina joined the act.

“I went over to catch it three nights later and see what was going on. I came right in the middle of Gabbo’s turn. There he stood, with Jimmy sitting on the table, and this peroxide Rubina all dressed up in red plush knickerbockers with green bows on the sides of the knees, hovering around and ‘acting’ — registering surprise and delight every time the dummy made a wisecrack. It almost ruined the turn.

“But what I noticed most was that Gabbo was a changed man. His whole attitude was different. He wasn’t making his usual goo-goo eyes at the audience or shooting over personality — which had been his long suit.

“He was all wrapped up in Rubina, staring at her like a sick puppy with the heaves. And calling her over every half-minute, between gags, and demanding another glass of water. And bowing like an idiot whenever she handed it to him. He must have drunk fourteen glasses of water during the act.

“And that, my friend, was just the beginning. The circuit thought it a big joke — Gabbo’s crush on Rubina.

“And what everybody considered the funniest part of the racket was that Rubina was as fond of Gabbo as if he had been a rattlesnake. She never had anything but a sneer and a wisecrack for him, and, when he got too fancy with his bow, just a low-down scowl. She would have none of him. Why, God only knows. Except perhaps that he was a little too nutty even for her. And she was no picker, believe me.

“In about two months things begin to grow serious. It seems, according to reports which come in from every town on the circuit, that Gabbo has carried his anger against Jimmy to such lengths that he’ll hardly talk to him on the stage, mind you. Keeps sneering at his jokes and trying to trip him up, and bawling him out in front of the audience.

“And then, after the act, he sits him up on the table in his dressing room and starts in hurling curses at the dummy and screaming. It scares people out of their wits. The actors backstage, I mean. You know, it’s kind of woozy to pass a room where you know a man is alone and hear him yelling at the top of his voice. And, what’s more, answering himself.

“And all this excitement, it seems, is due to jealousy. That was the whole point. It seems that this Rubina valentine had tumbled to the fact that Gabbo treated Jimmy like a living person. So, out of sheer cussedness, she had taken to patting Jimmy’s wooden cheeks on the stage. Or winking at him during the turn. And the blow-off came, I learned, when she slipped Jimmy a caramel as he was sitting in Gabbo’s lap in the dressing room. This was just downright morbid viciousness on Rubina’s part.

“After that there was nothing could straighten the thing out. As soon as Gabbo lands in town, I go backstage with him. He’s in his dressing room, and he stands there — the turn being over — just motioning me away and raging at this maniac dummy of his.

“ ‘That is the kind of a one you are,’ he screams. ‘That is the way you show your gratitude. After all I’ve done for you. Trying to steal the woman I love from me. The woman I love above everything.’ And then I listen to Jimmy answer, and, so help me, for a minute I thought it was that damned wooden image speaking.

“ ‘My life is my own,’ says Jimmy, squealing wilder than usual. ‘I can do what I want. And I’ll ask you to mind your own business, you big tub of lard.’

“At these words Gabbo jumped into the air and pulled his hair out in handfuls.

“ ‘Viper,’ he howled at the dummy.

“ ‘Idiot,’ Jimmy squeals back at him.

“What could I do? I just sneaked off and left them calling each other names like a pair of fishwives. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the act wouldn’t split up — that’s where I was chiefly concerned, you understand.

“Then came the second stage. I don’t know whatever got into this Rubina dame. She’d never pulled down more than thirty dollars a week in her life. And here she was getting a hundred. For doing nothing. And yet she writes me a long misspelled letter, that she’s quitting the act on Saturday and for me to find someone to take her place.

“I was of course tickled silly. Fifty dollars is fifty dollars. And, besides, I sort of liked Gabbo and I felt this Rubina was dangerous to him. It’s best for lunatics to steer clear of women — or for anybody for that matter.

“But my satisfaction didn’t last long. I get a telephone call the following Monday to hurry over to the Bronx where Gabbo is opening — being starred, mind you. My great ventriloquist, it seems, has gone out of his head.

“I get there just as the bill has started. Gabbo has just told the manager he won’t go on. He won’t act. He knows what he owes to his art and his public, but would rather be torn by wild horses than to step out on the stage alongside of that black imp of hell — Jimmy.

“And as he says these things he walks up and down in his dressing room, cursing Jimmy and glowering at him like a maniac. They’re having an out-and-out bust-up, like a team. Calling each other hams, among other less repeatable things.

“The house manager and all the actors were frightened silly at the noise. But I was used to Gabbo by this time, and began trying to calm him down. But I got no chance to get in a word edgewise — what with the way these two were going after each other. Gabbo thundering in his baritone and that damned dummy squealing back at him in his falsetto.

“I saw at once that Gabbo had really sort of gone over the edge. This time there was a murderous rage in his voice. And in Jimmy’s, too.

“I got so mixed up I began to worry — for Gabbo. Dummy or no dummy, I began to think that...

“Well, anyway, it appears that Rubina, his adored, the light of his life, has flown. And Gabbo’s idea, nutty as it sounds, is that Jimmy knows where she is. That she and Jimmy have framed against him. That Jimmy, the dirty hound, has stolen her love. Can you beat it?

“There’s no use trying to reason under such circumstances. Any more than getting logical with a man who has the D.T.’s. Gabbo won’t go on with the act. And he don’t. He’s through. And I stand still, and say nothing, and watch him hurl Jimmy into his black case, grab it under his arm, and start out with it.

“And I follow him out of the theater. He starts walking peculiarly, like a man half stewed. Then I see that he’s doubling on his tracks, trying to elude somebody. Me, I figured. But I kept on. Finally he goes into a store, and I watch him through the window. It’s a hardware store, and he stays in there for five minutes, and then comes out and makes a beeline for the hotel.

“I got to his room almost as soon as he did. But the door was locked. I stood there listening, and all of a sudden I hear screaming. In English, French, and several other languages. I swear to you, it scared me silly.

“I started banging on the door. But it’s no use. Finally I beat it down after the manager. We’re back in five minutes. And we open the door.

“Well, the room is silent and empty.

“I stood staring for a minute. Then I saw something. The floor is covered with pieces of wood. Splinters, sticks. It’s Jimmy. Chopped to pieces, cut to smithereens. He’d murdered Jimmy, honest to God.

“We looked all around the room, and found the ax he’d bought in the hardware store. And then found that he’d lit out through the window. Made his getaway down the fire-escape.

“And that’s the last trace we could pick up of him. We hunted high and low. I had two men scouring the town. But he was gone, leaving everything behind him. Fled — like a murderer, a murderer fleeing from justice, so help me.

“I gathered Jimmy up and put him in a piece of wrapping paper. That’s how confused I was. And I carried him to the office and finally threw him in the wastebasket. And then I went home, and was unable to sleep for six nights.

“That’s almost the end of the story. Except that two years ago I come in here one night after the show, and I see somebody familiar sitting at a table. I can’t place him for a few minutes, and then all of a sudden I see it’s Gabbo — Gabbo the Great — with a gray toupee and the mustache shaved.

“I rush over to him and begin talking. And he stared at me — highty-tighty like.

“ ‘My name,’ he says, ‘is Mr. Lawrence. I am sorry you make a mistake.’

“Well, I’m not unusually dense, and as I stood there it dawned on me that Gabbo didn’t want to be known. That he’d come back after fleeing from justice for eight years — come back disguised and with a different name, so that the police wouldn’t pick him up for his great crime.

“And there he sits,” Ferris looked at me with a mirthless smile. “Everybody knows his story in this place, and we all kid him along, calling him Mr. Lawrence and keeping his secret. Yeah, and when we get funny we call him the Ax Murderer. You know, just a gag among ourselves.

“Wait till he leaves” — Ferris picked up his glass — “and I’ll take you over to the table where he’s sitting.”

This struck me as a rather empty offer.

“What for?” I inquired.

“So you can see what Jimmy looked like.”

Ferris suddenly laughed. “He always draws a picture of that damned idiotic dummy on the tablecloth — every night.”