The Tenth Man

1

THERE IS AN OLD LEGEND THAT SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD every man has his double. This is the strange story of Jim Braddon.

Jim Braddon was a high-grade salesman employed by a breakfast cereal company in Philadelphia: a placid honest man who would never have injured anything larger than a fly. He had a wife and two children whom he spoiled. The 1941 war had affected him little for he was over forty and his employers claimed that he was indispensable. But he took up German-he had a German grandmother-because he thought that one day this might prove useful, and that was the only new thing that happened to him between 1941 and 1945. Sometimes he saw in the paper the picture of Schreiber, the Nazi Inspector-General of the concentration camps, but except that one of his children pretended to see a likeness to this Nazi, nobody else even commented on the fact.

In the autumn of 1945 a captured U-boat commander confessed that he had landed Schreiber on the coast of Mexico, and the film opens on a Mexican beach with a rubber dinghy upturned by the breakers and Schreiber’s body visible through the thin rim of water. The tide recedes and the land crabs come out of their holes. But the hunt for Schreiber is on, for the crabs will soon eliminate all evidence of his death.

The push for postwar trade is also on, and Braddon is dispatched by his firm for a tour of Central and South America. In the plane he looks at Life, which carries the story of the hunt for Schreiber. His neighbor, a small, earnest, bespectacled man full of pseudoscientific theories, points out the likeness to him. “You don’t see it,” he says. “I doubt whether one person in ten thousand would see it because what we mean by likeness as a rule is not the shape of the face and skull but the veil a man’s experience and character throw over the features. You are like Schreiber, but no one would notice it because you have led a very different life. That can’t alter the shape of the ears, but it’s the expression of the eyes people look at.” Apart from the joking child he is the only person who has noticed the likeness. Luckily for Braddon-and for himself-the stranger leaves the plane at the next halt. Halfway to Mexico City the plane crashes and all lives but Braddon’s are lost.

Braddon has been flung clear. His left arm is broken, he is cut about the face, and he has lost his memory from the concussion. The accident has happened at night and he has cautiously-for he is a very careful man-emptied his pockets and locked his papers in his briefcase which of course is lost. When he comes to, he has no identity but his features, and those he shares with a dead man. He searches his pockets for a clue, but finds them empty of anything that will help him: only some small change, and in each pocket of the jacket a book. One is a paper covered Heine; the other an American paperback. He finds that he can read both languages. Searching his jacket more carefully, he discovers a wad of ten-dollar notes, clean ones, sewn into the lining.

It is unnecessary in this short summary to work out his next adventures in detail: somehow he makes his way to a railroad and gets on a train to Mexico City. His idea is to find a hospital as quickly as he can, but in the washroom at the station he sees hanging by the mirror a photograph of Schreiber and a police description in Spanish and English. Perhaps the experiences of the last few days have hardened his expression, for now he can recognize the likeness. He believes he has found his name. His face takes on another expression now-that of the hunted man.

He does not know where to go or what to do: he is afraid of every policeman; he attracts attention by his furtiveness, and soon the papers bear the news that Schreiber has been seen in Mexico City. He lets his beard grow, and with the growth of the beard he loses his last likeness to the old Jim Braddon.

He is temporarily saved by Schreiber’s friends, a group of Fascists to whom Schreiber had borne introductions and who are expecting him. Among these are a brother and sister-a little, sadistic, pop-eyed Mexican whom we will call Peter for his likeness to Peter Lorre and his shifty, beautiful sister whom we will call Lauren for obvious reasons of casting. Lauren sets herself the task of restoring Jim’s memory-the memory which she considers Schreiber should possess. They fall in love: in her case without reserve, believing that she knows the worst about this man; in his with a reserve which he doesn’t himself understand.

Peter, however, is incurably careless. His love of pain and violence gets in the way of caution, and as a result of some incident yet to be worked out, Jim is caught by the Mexican police, while the others escape.

Schreiber could hardly have complained of rough treatment. Nor does Jim complain. He has no memory of his crimes, but he accepts the fact that he has committed them. The police force him to sit through a film of Buchenwald, and he watches with horror and shame the lean naked victims of Schreiber. He has no longer any wish to escape. He is content to die.

He is sent north to the American authorities, and the preliminary proceedings against him start. The new bearded Schreiber face becomes a feature of the press. His family among others see the picture, but never for a moment does it occur to any of them that this is Jim.

Among the spectators at the trial, however, is the little spectacled pseudopsychologist who was on the plane with Jim. He doesn’t recognize Jim, but he is puzzled by Schreiber (Schreiber is not acting true to character), and he remembers what he said to the man in the plane, that likeness is not a matter of skull measurements but of expression. The expression of horror and remorse is not one he would have expected to see in Schreiber’s eyes. This man claims to have lost his memory, and yet he denies nothing. Suppose after all they have got a man who is simply similar in bone structure…

Meanwhile Peter and Lauren, who escaped from the police trap which had closed on Jim, travel north. They plan a rescue. What their plan is I don’t know myself yet. Violent and desperate, it offers one chance in a hundred. But it comes off. Jim is whipped away from the court itself, and the hunt is on again. But this is not Mexico, and the hunt is a very short one. They are trapped in a suburban villa.

But Peter has taken hostages: a woman and her child who were in the house when they broke in. Jim has been obeying his companions like an automaton: there hasn’t even been time to take off his handcuffs, but at this last example of Fascist mentality his mind seems to wake. He turns on his friends and the woman he has loved. He knocks out Peter with the handcuffs and gets his gun. The woman too has a gun. They face each other across the length of the room like duellists. She says, “My dear, you won’t shoot me.” But he shoots and her shot comes a second after his, but it isn’t aimed at him: it hits her brother, who has regained his feet and is on the point of attacking. Her last words are, “You aren’t Schreiber. You can’t be. You’re decent. Who the hell are you?”

Braddon gives himself up, and the truth of the psychologist’s theory is glaringly exhibited. The likeness to Schreiber has proved to be physical only. I imagine the little man remembers at this point the man he talked to on the plane, he gives evidence, produces Braddon’s family. The happy ending needs to be worked out, but the strange case of Jim Braddon really comes to an end with the shots in the suburban villa. After that there’s just the reaching for the coats under the seats. Anyone in the stalls could tell you what happens now.