For Murder — or Worse

Chapter One The Wrong Corpse

It happened just like this, and I want to state with the utmost emphasis that I was minding my own business. Except when I find it necessary to exert my rather unique gift of salesmanship, I am by nature shy and retiring. I have been employed for some time by the Idle Hour Novelties Company. Mr. Max Idelhaur, my employer, trusts me with the introduction of new products to our distributor areas.

At the time this trouble started I was on my way west to our distributor area seven, which includes Pacific City and some fifty miles of coast line. I was traveling on the Red Chieftain, a train which I usually find to be very comfortable and suited to my purposes. I spent considerable time en route studying my ‘gag’ book. Mr. Max Idelhaur has frequently criticised me on the basis that I seem to lack a sense of humor. He seems to feel that a person in my position — introducing novelties to the trade — should be somewhat of a jokester. Thus I have been attempting to remedy this deficiency by copying down what show people, I believe, call ‘bits of business.’

I was fondly assuming that this trip would be a success. I was positive that our Mr. Darben would be entranced with the Wiggly, a glittering and life-like cockroach animated by a small and efficient rubber band motor. Indeed, I believed that our new Super-Dribble Glass would please him. It is based on a new principle. Instead of the fluid in the glass merely dripping through holes onto the user’s necktie, the entire bottom of the glass is false and activated by a concealed spring, so that once the glass is tipped up the bottom slide, up sharply, thrusting the entire contents of the glass into the user’s face with considerable force. But the third item I was introducing seemed to have sure-fire possibilities for the small-fry trade. It is a very lifelike reproduction of the Army Colt.45 automatic pistol. When the trigger is pulled it fires eight of our loudest caps in rapid succession, makes a very lifelike reproduction of the sound of a fire siren, and gives off a sharp odor of cordite.

As usual I had a compartment. On the night before our arrival in Pacific City a most peculiar thing happened. Had I known then what I now know, I would most certainly have denied that peculiar man’s request. He was a most unwholesome type.

Just as I was about to retire, he tapped at my door. I admitted him. He said, “Jack, I wonder’f you’d do a guy a favor.”

“My name,” I said, “is not Jack. It is Omar Dudley.”

“Omar, you look like a nice guy.” I thanked him for that comment. He was weaving a bit more than the motion of the train should have caused. He gave off a distinct odor of hard spirits. As I feel a salesman should keep his wits about him, I seldom drink. When I do, I prefer a white mint frappe after a good dinner.

“I saw you come in this compartment, Omar.” Though he kept smiling, he seemed to be under considerable strain. “Some people I don’t want to meet up with have got hold of my compartment number, Omar. Maybe they’ll be piling on the train at the next stop to wake me up, and I’m a fella needs his sleep. Now if they can’t find me, I’ll be all set. I’m dead for sleep. So I wonder’f you’d do a guy a favor and trade compartments.”

“People who awaken other people are most inconsiderate,” I said.

“They sure are,” he agreed, “and here’s twenty bucks for your trouble.”

“My good man, I do not want to accept money for a little favor like this.”

“As I said before, you are a nice guy, Omar.”

He seemed to be the type that it is easier to humor than it is to get rid of, so we traded compartments with what seemed to me to be unseemly stealth. He brought his single bag to my compartment and I took my bag and my box containing our three new items to his compartment. When it was done, he seemed overcome with enormous relief.

Nothing would do but I had to accompany him to the club car for a nightcap. His compartment was near mine and the club car was four cars toward the head of the train.

I sat beside him in the club car and ordered a ginger ale. He had an offensive laugh. He was in gay spirits until suddenly two other men entered the club car. They seemed to be of the same type as my new friend, who had told me his name was Smith. As soon as they entered he became exceptionally nervous. He licked his lips repeatedly.

When he departed, he was must rude. He did not pause to say goodnight. He merely bounded up and scurried back the way we had come. The two men followed him quickly and quietly.

Without giving the matter any more thought, I retired to my compartment.

I awakened in the morning when the train had already stopped under its long shed in the yards of Pacific City. I whistled as I shaved at the compartment sink, because I was in high good spirits. Our Mr. Darben would expect me to address a meeting of all salesmen, and I was well prepared for the task.

There was a tap on the door and I reached over and unlatched it. Two rather frail looking young men came in. They both wore lurid examples of the more distasteful California style shirts.

“Yes?” I said politely.

They sat side by side on my unmake berth and one of them supplied cigarettes for both. “Take your time,” said the slightly more sallow one.

“I certainly shall, my good man. But I am slightly confused as to your purpose.”

“You expected an escort, didn’t you?” the other one said.

I said, “When my employment has taken me to other areas, an escort has not been considered necessary.”

“This is hotter than you might think,” the sallower one said.

“Really? I thought Pacific City was quite cool this time of year.”

They both slapped their legs and guffawed. I blushed with pleasure.

They watched me finish dressing. I put my toilet articles in. my suitcase and fastened the straps. The sallower one said, “I didn’t notice no artillery.”

It took me a moment to figure out what he meant. And then I was intensely disappointed. There had been a leak somewhere. Our Zing-Bang Pistol was to have been a complete surprise.

I tapped the box, and sighed deeply. “It’s in there, gentlemen. I’m sorry you know about it.”

They both stared at me. “Know about it! What you think we’re playing out here? Marbles, maybe?”

“The turnover on marbles has been so disappointing that we’ve dropped the line,” I informed them.

Again they both dissolved into helpless laughter.

“Geez, you’re killin’ me,” the one with goldfish on his shirt said.

“Shall we go?” I asked.

They stood up.

One of them was kind enough to take my bag. I carried the package, of course. They accompanied me out through the station. One action struck me as quite peculiar. Just as we were about to go into the station proper, the goldfish one touched my arm and held me back while the other walked into the station, took a long look around, then turned and motioned to us.

“Can’t be too careful,” the goldfish one said.

I saw at once what he meant. Our strongest competitor in that area is the E-Z Fun Company. Though I have long know that any company which got its start through itching powder would probably stoop to any deviltry, I had not heretofore realized that they would employ actual violence in order to wrest from us our newest developments.

“Would they try anything right here in the station?” I asked.

“Brother, there’s enough at stake so they’d pot you right off the governor’s lap.”

I can only say that this did not astonish me too much, because I realized that this was our major California sales area — and in our business we have found that the residents of California, more than those of any other state, are willing to pay huge sums merely to disconcert and humiliate their fellow citizens. In one year alone we sold seventy-three thousand six hundred and forty rubber cocktail pickles in California.

They employed the same caution when they reached the street, and then they hustled me over into a long, dark blue sedan already occupied by a uniformed driver. The motor was running and the car slid ahead as the door closed.

The goldfish one rapped his knuckles on the window nearest him. “You can relax now,” he said. It seemed an odd superstition, rapping on glass, but I ignored it.

“Any excitement out your way?” the other little man asked.

The only thing that seemed apropos was my recent survey of retail outfits instigated by Mr. Max Idelhaur.

“I personally eliminated eleven dealers,” I said with quiet pride.

His jaw sagged and his eyes protruded a bit. I revised my estimate of him. Doubtless he was one of the dealers rather than one of our Mr. Darben’s salesmen.

“Holy Moses!” he said. “Eleven! I didn’t see it in the papers.”

Doubtless he was referring to the trade papers. “We have ways of avoiding undue publicity,” I said. He nodded sagely.

“I wish we had that kind of control out here,” he said.

I then noticed that we were going in almost the exact opposite direction from our Mr. Darben’s offices. Then I realized that it was quite early. Doubtless we were going to his home. This surprised me a bit, as I have always felt that Mr. Darben does not particularly care for me. I frequently criticize his expense accounts.

We rode in silence and at last turned into a winding street called Jacaranda Drive. The chauffeur turned into a driveway and blew his horn in front of a massive wrought-iron gate. I made a mental note to remove the expense item of this trip from Mr. Darben’s next expense account. A man came running to the gate on the inside. He stared out at us, then activated the gate with some sort of a pushbutton. We could not see the house itself until we were inside the gate, and then it quite took my breath away. Our Mr. Darben was certainly doing very well indeed. I decided to caution him about going in debt. It was a huge structure of grey stone, redwood and plate glass. Beyond one corner I could see the end of a swimming pool, with bright mattresses laid out on the edge of it.

The car stopped and the goldfish one said, “Now we’re really all right.”

When he got out and took my bag out, I said, “Now look here! I am planning on residing in a hotel.”

“Wait’ll you hear the pitch,” he said, “then decide.”

I shrugged. I followed them to a side door, my package under my arm. We went into a hallway and then out onto a very pleasant little terrace with several tables. It overlooked the pool.

The chauffeur had come in. He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll tell ’em in the kitchen what you want.”

“That’s very nice of you. Orange juice, toast and coffee, please.”

“Coming up. He ought to be down in a half hour or so. Want a paper?”

“Yes, thank you.” A fresh copy of the Pacific City Courier was given to me and I was left alone on the terrace. The morning breeze was fresh and quite comfortably cool. Soon a young man in a white coat brought my breakfast. He seemed to be some sort of an Oriental.

I inspected the breakfast most carefully. Our representatives have a somewhat annoying habit of trying to catch a man from the home office with some of his own merchandise. The butter was not our hard yellow rubber special which has sold so well, nor did I find one of our green plastic Wiggli-Worms in the orange juice.

As I buttered my second piece of toast, a young woman came out through the wide doors and approached my table. I would hesitate to call her a lady. Her long yellow hair was not carefully combed, and there were remnants of yesterday’s lipstick on her slightly over-heavy lips. She had an extremely sulky expression. But the thing which dismayed me most was her attire. She wore some sort of a wrapper, I believe they are called.

“He told me to come down and entertain you,” she said somewhat bitterly.

I naturally held a chair for her.

“Soong!” she yelled, so loudly that I jumped. The Oriental put in his appearance. “Coffee, Soong. Black and lots of it,” she demanded. When he left she pressed her palms against her temples and sighed. “Will I never learn?” she said. Then she looked at me steadily. Her eyes were so level and so frankly searching that I felt myself blush. “Do you know your business?” she asked. “You certainly don’t look it.”

“I think you should know,” I said with dignity, “that I am well thought of in many quarters.”

“Maybe I haven’t seen everything,” she said obtusely.

“Have you known Mr. Darben long?” I asked politely. This woman certainly bore no resemblance to Mrs. Darben, a short, heavily-constructed person who quotes Browning.

“I don’t know any Darben,” she said.

It did not take my agile mind long to recover from the surprise. I surmised that they were giving me what is called ‘the buildup’. Evidently this was a rather topheavy ‘gag’, precisely the sort of thing you would expect from our Mr. Darben, a man of rather meager resources.

As I was about to play along with her in an attempt to turn the tables on them, a strange man came out onto the terrace. He wore a pale yellow terrycloth robe and his brown feet were bare. I must say that he was a most handsome man. Though his hair was white, he seemed to be in the very flush of health. I was prepared to like him at once, yet when he stared at me I noticed that his eyes had an uncanny coldness about them. They were of that grey shade that icicles get in a soft coal region.

I stood up and reached my hand out to him. He came toward me to take my hand, saying, “Glad you made it okay.” Just as he was about to take my hand I lifted it out of his reach, closing my fingers and pointing my thumb back over my right shoulder. It is one of those ‘bits of business’ that seem to be essential when one is out on the road selling our line.

He went white with fury and I beamed at him, because it is one of the tenets of our trade that a successful ‘gag’ always leaves the subject enormously angry. The woman at the table made a strangling sound. Then the stranger proved that he was no gentleman. Barely glancing at her, he backhanded her across the mouth. The blow was sufficient to split her lip and knock her over backwards. She scrambled to her feet and moved away from the white-haired man, obviously afraid of a second punishing blow.

It was the first time I have ever seen a woman brutally struck. Though she seemed to be a rather sordid type, she was still a woman. One might say almost too obviously a woman.

“That, sir,” I said, stepping toward him, “was the act of a dastard.”

“What did you say?” he asked me in a curiously small voice.

“The act of a coward and a bully!”

I detest violence, but in this case it was obvious that someone had to take a firm hand. I am a veteran of three years of boxing lessons at the YMCA. I went up onto my toes and put my left fist out and danced around him in a deadly circle, my right hand coiled to strike. He turned and faced me as I circled him, utter amazement on his face. But he was sufficiently wise not to raise his hands. I imagine that he realized I could not hit a man who made no attempt to protect himself.

Then he threw his head back and laughed. He laughed until the tears squeezed out of his eyes and he sank weakly into the nearest chair. He was too far gone for several moments to talk.

“Okay, okay,” he gasped, “they told me you were a handy man with a boffo, but I didn’t know how good you really were. Sit down and finish your coffee.”

I sat down, rather puzzled. “Just who are you, sir?”

“Hell, you can drop the gag now. I asked for you especially. You are Jumpy, aren’t you?”

I considered the quivering condition of my hands, a residue of anger. “I certainly am,” I said.

The woman was still dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. She had cautiously resumed her chair at our table. “Take a walk, Brenda,” he told her. She got up without a word and went into the house.

Just as he leaned toward me to speak, the chauffeur appeared in the doorway and said, “Boss, phone.”

“Be right back, Jumpy,” he said.

I picked up the paper again to try to quiet my nerves. And then I saw the box on the bottom of page one. It was labeled Special Release. My mouth went dry as a buried bone as I read it.

It is a proven fact that all successful salesman achieve their positions through an ability to think on their toes, as it were. Thoughts raced through my mind with unbelievable speed, and it was no time at all before I realized that my odd reception in Pacific City was due to the fact that I was believed to be the man who had called himself Smith and who, in tallness and slimness at least, bore a superficial resemblance to myself. Along with that decision, I also deduced that Smith had attempted to have me killed in his place. Had not the two men found him in the club car... I shuddered.

I thought of the killing on the train and shuddered again. I hastily folded the paper as the white-haired man returned to sit with me. He was now fully dressed.

“Now, look,” he said in a confidential tone.

“I am afraid,” I said, “that you must listen to me first. I am not your man. I am only...”

He looked beyond me and nodded. I turned around and saw the chauffeur standing not twenty feet away. He held a pistol in his hand and there was a bulky thing on the end of the muzzle which I took to be a silencer.

The words I was about to speak froze in my throat.

The white-haired man said softly, “Now get this, Jumpy, and get it very straight. We’re not fools out here. We know that there’s a damn good chance that the other side got to you and greased you. We don’t trust you any further than Brenda can throw that swimming pool. We asked Nicky for a good man for a special job and we requested you on account of your reputation. I’m going to tell you the job you’re going to do and you’re going to go through with it exactly the way I suggest. If you make one move we don’t like — just one move — I’m going to have George there give you a spinal with that little toy he’s got. It’s something George enjoys doing. Any out-of-line move you make will be evidence to me that you’re either trying to cross us on your own or Nicky is playing along with the other side. Now get on your feet and keep your back to George.”

Much to my astonishment, my trembling legs obeyed the command.

“How much did Nicky tell you?” he demanded.

My legs had worked, but my voice wouldn’t. I felt as though somebody had me by the throat. I felt the corners of my mouth lift. It was an instinctive grimace.

“Put your hands up and stop grinning at me,” he roared.

I couldn’t lift my arms. They hung by my sides like sacks of sand. I couldn’t change the expression of my face.

“I’m boss out here,” he said in a low dangerous voice, “Put those hands up and stop grinning or I’m going to tell George to shoot. One... two...”

I had heard that expression ‘paralyzed by fright’ but I had never believed that it was anything but the most gross exaggeration. With a respectable anatomical chart at hand I could have pointed to the precise vertebrae that would be separated by George’s bullet.

“Hell, you must be all right,” the white-haired man said. “I always heard you’ve got your share of nerve. Sit down and have some coffee.”

I sat down with an astonishing jolt that made my teeth click sharply. I reached for the coffee cup. My hand was oily with perspiration. My index finger slid through the handle on the cup. I lifted the cup to my lips and it chattered against my front teeth. The white-haired man looked at me sharply. Then he grinned.

“Say, that’s a good act!”

A salesman is resourceful. I put the cup down. But I couldn’t get my finger out of the handle. I tried to do so in an inconspicuous manner. The cup chattered against the saucer. I steadied the cup with my other hand and managed to pull my finger free.

“You can stop clowning,” the white-haired man said. “How much did Nicky tell you?”

“Nothing,” I answered truthfully.

Just then the little man with the shirt with the goldfish came out onto the porch. “Good morning, Mr. Artigan,” he said politely to the white-haired man.

“Sit down, Fish. You met Jumpy Anderson didn’t you?”

Fish sat down with a hurt expression. “Boss, I went with Artie and George and got him off the train, remember?” Fish shook his narrow little head sadly and clucked at me. “Boss, he smeared eleven guys lately and he don’t worry none. He carries his rod around in a box under his arm. Are you sure he ain’t nuts?”