CORNELL WOOLRICH
The Living Lie
Down With the Dead
THROUGHOUT THE 1930S, Black Mask's primary rival in the pulp detective field was Dime Detective, edited by Kenneth S. White of Popular Publications. When it was inaugurated in 1932, Dime Detective was advertised as a magazine of "mystery . . . thrills . . . terror" and published as many eerie, neo-gothic melodramas as it did stories of hard and brittle realism. But the success of Cap Shaw's magazine soon forced Popular to launch a new publication, Dime Mystery, for its terror stories so that White could concentrate on buying fiction for Dime Detective that was more in keeping with the Black Mask formula.
Dime Detective remained an imitator, however, even though White was a good editor and even after Shaw left Black Mask in 1936 as the end result of a dispute with his publishers. Ironically, White, who had been jealous of Shaw's success, became the editor of Black Mask himself when Popular Publications bought the title in 1940. Both magazines ended their days in the early fifties, rather ignominiously publishing, for the most part, second-rate pulp action stories under such titles as "Pardon My Poison Platters," "You're the Crime in My Coffin," and "Hollywood Knife Life."
During the mid-thirties rivalry between the two magazines, White succeeded in luring some Black Mask writers into his stable. Frederick Nebel created Cardigan, his "Cosmos Agency dick," for Dime Detective, and kept him active long after Nebel dropped out of Black Mask. Norbert Davis wrote for Dime Detective; so did Carroll John Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner, and George Harmon Coxe. White also encouraged a number of other pulpsters, including Frederick C. Davis, John Lawrence, T. T. Flynn,John K. Butler, and William E. Barrett (who later became the bestselling author of, among other novels, Lilies of the Field).
White's most important "find" among the newer writers was Cornell Woolrich. He was not the purchaser of Woolrich's first pulp crime story— that honor went to the editor of Detective Fiction Weekly, who bought and published "Death Sits in the Dentist's Chair" in his August 4, 1934 issue—but White did buy many of Woolrich's early stones. One of them, published in the April 1936 Dime Detective, was "The Living Lie Down with the Dead," a story which ranks with the best of that early work and yet has never before been reprinted in its original form. (A heavily edited and less effective version appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1955, under another title.)
Woolrich was evidently obsessed by the idea of being buried alive; that theme is the basis for this story and for another, "Graves for the Living," and to a lesser degree can be found in some of his other nightmarish works. "The Living Lie Down with the Dead" is a potent brew of steadily mounting suspense and horror, in which a pair of crooks devise and carry out what they consider to be a foolproof plan to steal a fortune in jewels from a sealed mausoleum. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and ghouls . . .
Cornell George Hopley Woolrich (1903-1968) was a tragic figure who lived most of his life in New York City hotel rooms, both alone and with his domineering mother. He suffered a life-long sense of unfulfillment and doom, which perhaps explains his ability to vividly express palpable dread in his fiction; no writer past or present rivals him in the evocation of pure terror, as such novels as The Bride Wore Black (1940), Black Alibi (1942), and Phantom Lady (1942, as by William Irish)—and such short stories as "Papa Benjamin," "The Screaming Laugh," and the one you are about to read—eloquently attest.
Critic Francis M. Nevins, Jr., who has been responsible for the modern revival of much of Woolrich's work—Ballantine Books reissued ten of his best novels in 1982-1983, to considerable acclaim—calls Woolrich "the Poe of the twentieth century and the poet of its shadows." It is both an apt description and a proper one.

 THE DEPRESSION HAD given Miss Alfreda Garrity a bad fright. The one of '93, not the last one. She saw banks blow up all around her, stocks hit the cellar, and it did something to her common-sense, finishing what a knock-out blow from love had begun ten years before; it made the round-topped, iron-hooped trunk lying in a corner of her hotel-room look good.
Her father, the late railroad president, Al Garrity, had left her well-provided-for for life, but when she got through, everything she owned was in that trunk there in the room with her—$90,000 in old-fashioned napkin-size currency. She had a new lock put on it, and a couple of new bolts on her room-door, which she hadn't been through since the night she was jilted, wedding-dress and all, five hundred and twenty weeks before. She'd taken a considerable beating, but no depression could get at her from now on, and that was that.
So far so good, but within a year or so a variation had entered her foolproof scheme of things. Some blood-curdling rumor of inflation may have drifted in to her from the world outside. There was a guy named Bryan doing a lot of talking about silver. Either that, or the banknotes, beginning to show the wear and tear of being taken out, pawed over and counted every night at bedtime, lacked attractiveness and durability for purposes of hoarding. After all, she lay awake worrying to herself, they were only pieces of printed paper. One day, therefore, she cranked up the handle on the wall-telephone ('96) and called one of the better-known jewelry firms down on Maiden Lane.
The manager himself showed up that afternoon, bringing sample-cases under the watchful eye of an armed guard. A $5,000 diamond brooch found its way into the trunk to glisten there unseen under all the dog-eared packets of crummy banknotes. Pretty soon they were just a thin layer solidly bedded on a sparkling rockpile. By 1906 she had to quit that—she'd run out of money and the rocks went to work for her. Their value doubled, tripled, quadrupled, as the price of diamonds skyrocketed. In that one respect, maybe she hadn't been so batty after all.
Meanwhile, she never stepped out of the room, and the only one she allowed in it was an old colored maid who brought her meals to her—and never dreamed what was in that mouldy old trunk in the corner. But ail during the Twenties, sometimes at night an eery figure would glide silently about the room, flashing prismatic fire from head to foot, a ghost covered with diamonds. There wasn't space enough on the rustling white bridal-gown to put them all, so she'd spread the rest around her on the floor and walked barefooted on a twinkling carpet of pins, brooches, bracelets, ring-settings, getting the feel of them. Sometimes tiny drops of red appeared on the sharp points of the faceted stones.
She knew her number was going to be up soon, and it got so she couldn't bear the thought of parting from them, leaving them behind. She called her lawyer in, the grandson of the man who had been her father's lawyer, and told him her wishes in the matter, made out her will. She was to be buried in the vault her father had built for himself fifty years before; she was to go into it in her bridal-dress, face veiled, and no one must look at her face once the embalmers were through with her. There must be a glass insert at the top of the coffin, and instead of being placed horizontally as in Christian burial, it was to be left standing upright like the Egyptians used to do. And all the diamonds in the trunk were to be sealed into the tomb with her, were to follow her into the next world; she wanted them left directly in front of the glass-slitted sarcophagus, where she could look at them through all eternity. She had no heirs, no relatives, nobody had a claim on them but herself, and she was taking them with her.
"I charge you," she wheezed hectically, "on your professional honor, to see that this is carried out according to my instructions!"
He had expected something dippy from her, but not quite as bad as all that. But he knew her well enough not to try to talk her out of it, she would only have appointed a different executor— and good-bye diamonds! So the will was drawn up, signed, and attested. He was the last one to see her alive. She must have known just when it was coming. The old colored crone couldn't get in the next morning, and when they broke down the door they found her stretched out in her old yellowed wedding-gown, orange-blossom wreath, satin slippers, and all. This second bridegroom hadn't left her in the lurch like the first.
The news about the diamonds leaked out somehow, although it was the last thing the lawyer had wanted. The wedding-dress bier set-up was good copy and had attracted the reporters like flies to honey in the first place. Then some clerk in his law-office may have taken a peek while filing the will and let the cat out of the bag. The trunk had been taken from the room, secreted, and put under guard, but meanwhile the value of its contents had spurted to half a million, and the story got two columns in every evening paper that hit the stands. It was one of those naturals. Everybody in the city was talking about it that first night, to forget about it just as quickly the next day.
Unfortunately for the peace of Miss Garrity's soul, there were two who took a professional interest in the matter instead of just an esoteric one. Chick Thomas' eye lighted on it on his way to the back of the paper where the racing charts were. He stopped, read it through once, and looked thoughtful; then he read it a second time and did more thinking. When he'd given it a third once-over, you could tell by his face he had something. He folded the paper tubularly to the exclusion of everything else but this one item and called it to the attention of Angel Face Zabriskie by whacking it ecstatically across his nose. There was no offense in the blow, only triumph. "Get that," he said, sliding his mouth halfway toward his ear to pronounce the two words.
Angel Face read it and got it, just the way Chick wanted him to. They looked at each other. "How d'ya know it ain't just a lot of malarkey? Her mouth won't admit or deny it, it says here."
"Which proves they're going through with it," opined the cagey Chick. "He don't want it advertised, that's all. If they weren't gonna do it, he'd say either yes or no, one or the other. Don't you know mouths by now? Anytime one of 'em won't talk it means you've stolen a base on him."
Angel Face resumed cutting his corns with a razor-blade. "So they're turning over the ice to the worms. So what's the rush? Let her cool off a while first before we get busy on the spade-work—if that's what you got in mind."
Chick got wrathful. "No wonder I'm stuck here in a punk furnished-room, teaming up with you! You got about as much imagination as the seat of my pants! Don't you know a haul when you see one? 'What's the rush?' he mimicked nasally. "No rush at all! Wait a week, sure, why not? And then find out somebody else has beat us to it! D'ya think we're the only two guys reading this paper tonight? Don't you think there's plenty of others getting the same juice out of it we are? Five hundred grand ain't unloaded into a cemetery every day in the week, you know. If I'd listen to you we'd prob'ly have to get in line, wait our turn to get near it—"
Angel Face tossed aside the razor-blade, shook a sock out and began putting it on. "Well, what's the answer?" he asked not unreasonably. "Hold up the hearse on its way out there? How do we know it'll be in the hear—"
"Naw," snapped Chick, "it won't be in the hearse in the first place, and there'll prob'ly be enough armed guards around it to give an imitation of a shooting-gallery if we tried that; that mouth of hers is no fool. And point that kick of yours the other way, will ya, it's stuffy enough in here already!" Angel Face obligingly swiv-eled around the other way on his chair while he finished clothing his pedal extremity. "Naw, here's the idea," resumed Chick, "it come to me just like that while I was reading about it." He snapped his fingers to illustrate the suddenness of the inspiration. "To be johnny-on-the-spot and ring the bell ahead of all the other wise guys, one of us goes right into the burial-vault all dressed in wood instead of the stiff they think they're planting. That's one angle none of the others'll think of, I bet!"
Angel Face threw a nauseated look up at him from shoe-level. "Yeah? Well, as long as you thought of it, you're elected."
His roommate squinted at the ceiling in exasperation. "They ain't burying her in sod! Don't you know what a mausoleum is yet? They're like little stone or marble houses. I've seen some of 'em. They got more room inside than this two-by-four rat-hole we're in now. They're just gonna leave her standing up in there. Wait, I'll read it over to you—"
He swatted the paper across his thigh, traced a finger along the last few lines of print at the bottom. "The burial will take place at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning at the Cedars of Lebanon Cemetery. The services will be strictly private. To discourage curiosity-seekers, Mr. Staunton has arranged for a detail of police to bar outsiders from the grounds both before and during the ceremonies. Whether the fantastic provisions of the will are to be carried out in their entirety and a huge fortune in jewelry cached in the crypt, could not be learned. It is thought likely, however, that because of the obvious risks involved it will be allowed to remain in the vault only a short time, out of regard to the wishes of the deceased, and will then be removed to a safer place. Funeral arrangements completed at a late hour last night, it is learned on good authority, call for the use of a specially constructed coffin with a glass 'pane' at the top, designed and purchased several years ago by Miss Garrity herself and held in readiness, somewhat after the old Chinese custom. The body is to be left standing upright. Pending interment, the remains have been removed to the Hampton Funeral Parlors—"
Chick flicked his hand at the paper. "Which just about covers everything we needa know! What more d'ya want? Now d'ya understand why we gotta get right in with it from the beginning? Outside of a lotta other mugs trying to muscle in, it says right here that they're only liable to leave it there a little while before they take it away again, maybe the very next day after, for all we know. We only got one night we can be dead sure of. That's the night after the funeral, tomorrow night."
"Even so," argued Angel Face, "that still don't prove that two guys can't get at it just as quick from the outside as they can if one's outside and one's in."
"Where's yer brains? If we both stay outside we can't get to work until after dark when the cemetery closes, and even then there's a watchman to figure on. But if one guy's on the inside along with a nice little kit of files and chisels, he can get started the minute they close the works up on him, have the whole afternoon to get the ice out of the strongbox or trunk or whatever they put it in. Y'don't think they're gonna leave it lying around loose on the floor, do ya? Or maybe," he added witheringly, "you was counting on backing an express-van up to the place and moving it out trunk and all?" He spat disgustedly at an opening between two of the floor-boards.
"Well, if the shack is stone or marble like you said, how you gonna crack it?"
"It's got a door just like any other place, ain't it?" roared Chick. Then quickly dropping his voice again, "How d'ya get at any door, even a bronze one? Take an impression of the key that works it! If we can't do that, then maybe we can pick the lock or find some other way. Anyhow that part of it's the least; it's getting the ice all done up ready to move out in a hurry that counts. We gotta be all set to slip right out with it. We can't hang around half the night showing lights and bringing it out a piece at a time."
"Gee," admitted Angel Face, "the way you tell it, it don't sound so bad, like at first. I kept thinking about dirt being shoveled right on top of the coffin, and all like that. It ain't that I'm yellow or anything—"
"Naw," agreed his companion bitingly, "orange! Well we'll settle that part of it right-off before we do anything else, then we'll go up and look the place over, get a line on it." He produced a shining quarter, newly minted, from somewhere about his person. "I'll toss you for who goes in and who stays out. Heads it's you, tails it's me. How about it?"
Angel Face nodded glumly. The coin flashed up to within half a foot of the ceiling, spun down again. Chick cupped it neatly in his hollowed palm. He held his hand under the other's nose. Miss Liberty stared heartlessly up at them.
"O.K. Satisfied?" Chick dropped the coin back into a vest-pocket, not the trouser-pocket where he kept the rest of his small change. He'd had it for years; it had been given to him as a souvenir by a friend who had once been in the business, as an example of the curious accidents that beset even the best of counterfeiters at times. It had come from the die with a head stamped on each side of it.
Angel Face was a little white around the gills. "Aw, I can't go through with it, Chick, it's no use. It gives me the heebies even to think about getting in the box in her place."
"Take a little whiff of C before you climb in, and it'll be over with before you know it. They don't even lie you down flat, they just stand you up, and you got glass to look through the whole time— it's no different from being in a telephone-booth." Then, still failing to note any signs of enthusiasm on the other's face, he kicked a chair violently out of the way, flung back his arm threateningly. "All right, blow, then! G'wan, ya yellowbelly, get outa here! I'll get me another shill! There's plenty of guys in this town would do more than that to get their mitts on a quarter of a grand worth of ice! All y'gotta do is stand still with a veil on your dome for half a day—and you're heeled for the rest of your life!"
Angel Face didn't take the departure which had been so pointedly indicated. Instead he took a deep abdominal breath. "All right, pipe down, d'ya want everyone in the house to hear ya?" he muttered reluctantly. "How we gonna get in the place to look it over, like you said?"
Chick was already down on his heels unbuckling a dog-eared valise. "I never believe in throwing away nothing. I used to have a fake press-card in here someplace. I never knew till now why I hung onto it. Now I know. That and a sawbuck oughta fix it for us to see this grave-bungalow. We're a couple reporters sent up to describe it for our paper ahead of time." He shuffled busily through a vast accumulation of pawn-tickets, dummy business cards, fake letters of introduction, forged traveler's checks, dirty French postcards, and other memorabilia of his salad days. Finally he drew something out. "Here it is. It got me on a boat once when the heat was on, and I ducked across the pond—"
"Can two of us get by on one?" Angel Face wanted to know, studying it.
"Naw, cut out a piece of cardboard the same size and scribble on it, stick it in your hatband. I'll just flash this one, the gateman up there prob'ly won't know the diff." He kicked the valise back under the bed. "Let's go. Stick a pencil behind your ear and scratch something on the back of an envelope every now and then—and keep your trap shut; I'll do the rest of it."
They went trooping down the rickety rooming-house stairs, two gentlemen bound on engrossing business. They checked on the Cedars of Lebanon Cemetery in a directory in a candy store on the corner, and Chick bought three or four bars of very inferior milk-chocolate done up in tinfoil, insisting that it be free of nuts, raisins, or any other filling. He stuck one piece in each of his four vest-pockets, which was as close to his body as he could get it.
"It'll melt and run on ya," warned Angel Face as they made their way to the subway.
"Whaddya suppose I'm doing it for?" gritted the master mind tersely. "Will ya shuddup or d'ya want me to hang one on your loud-talking puss!"
"Aw, don't get so tempermental," subsided Angel Face. Chick was always like this when they were on a job. But he was good just the same, had that little added touch of imagination which he himself lacked, he realized. That was why he teamed with him, even though he almost always was the fall-guy.
They rode a Bronx train to the end of the line, walked the rest of the distance on foot. Chick spoke once, out of the side of his face. "Not so fast, relax. These newspaper punks never hurry."
The cemetery was open. They slouched in, strolled up to the gatekeeper's lodge. Angel Face looked about him in surprise. He had expected rows of mouldering headstones, sunken graves, and cockeyed crosses. Instead it looked just like a big private estate. It was a class cemetery, no doubt about it. The most that could be seen from the perimeter was an occasional group of statuary, a tasteful pergola or two, screened by leaves and shrubbery. There were even rustic benches of hewn logs set here and there along the winding paths. It was just like a park, only cleaner. Tall cypress trees rustled in the wind. The set-up perked him up a lot. It wasn't such a bad place to spend a night—salary, $250,000. He let go a bar or two of Casey Jones and got a gouge in the ribs from Chick's elbow.
The gatekeeper came out to them and Chick turned on the old personality. "Afternoon, buddy. We been sent up here to get a story on this tomb the old crow with the di'monds is going into tomorrow. We been told not to come back without it, or we lose our jobs." He flashed the press-card, jerked his head at the one in Angel Face's hatband, put his own away again.
"What a way to earn a living," said the gatekeeper pessimistically. "Nearly as bad as my own. Help yourselves. You follow this main path all the way back, then turn off to your left. The Garrity mausoleum is about fifty yards beyond. You'll know it by the—"
Chick's paw dropped fraternally on the old codger's shoulder. "How about giving us a peek inside? Just so we can get a rough idea. You know yourself we haven't got a chance of getting near the place tomorrow. We don't want to take pitchers or anything, you can search us, we have no camera." Angel Face helpfully raised his arms to frisking position, dropped them again.
"I couldn't, gents, I couldn't. The gatekeeper stroked the silver stubble on his face. "It would cost me my job if the trustees ever got wind of it." He glanced down sideways at the ten-spot poking into his breast-pocket from Chick's dangling hand. "How's chances?" the latter slurred.
"About fifty-fifty." The old man grinned hesitantly. "Y'know these plots are private property. I ain't even supposed to butt into 'em myself—" But his eyes were greedily following the second sawbuck going in to join the first. Even Angel Face hadn't seen his partner take it out, he was that smooth.
"Who's gonna know the difference, it won't take a minute. We'll be out again before you know it." A third tenner was tapped down lightly on top of the other two.
The old man's eyes crinkled slyly. "I ain't supposed to leave my post here at the gate, not till we close up at six—" But he was already turning to go back into the lodge for something. Chick dropped one eyelid at Angel Face. The old man came out again with a hoop of thick ponderous keys slung over his arm. He looked around him craftily. "Come on before anyone sees us," he muttered.
They started down the main path one on each side of him; Chick took the side he was carrying the keys on. He took out a chocolate-bar, laid open the tinfoil, and took a very small nibble off one corner. Then he kept it flat up against his moist palm after that, holding it in place with his thumb.
"See that you get all this now," he ordered Angel Face across their guide's shoulders. "The Captain's putting himself out for us." Angel Face stripped the pencil from his ear, held the back of an envelope in readiness. "He takes the rough notes and I polish 'em up, work 'em into an article," explained Chick professionally.
"You young fellas must get good money," remarked the old man.
"Nothing to brag about. Of course, the office foots the bill for any extra expenses—like just now." Even an old lame-brain like this might figure thirty-dollars a pretty stiff tip coming from a legman.
"Oh, no wonder," crackled the old fellow shrewdly. "So that's it!"
Chick secretly got rid of the distasteful morsel of sweet stuff he'd been holding in his mouth, took out a second chocolate-bar and stripped it open, nipped it between his teeth. The gateman didn't notice that he now had two, one in each hand. He kept his palms inward and they didn't extend beyond his fingertips.
They turned off the main path without meeting anyone, followed a serpentine side-path up over a rise of ground, and just beyond came face-to-face with a compact granite structure, domed and about ten feet high. The path ended at its massive bronze door, flanked by two hefty stone urns and guarded by a reclining angel blowing a trumpet.
"Here she is," said the gatekeeper, and once again looked all around. So did Chick, but for a different reason. Not very far ahead he could make out the tall iron railing that bounded the cemetery; the Garrity mausoleum, therefore, was near its upper limits, on the side away from town. He peered beyond, searching hurriedly for an identifying landmark on the outside by which to locate it. It wasn't built up out there, just open country, but he could make out a gray thread of motor highway with a row of billboards facing his way. That was enough, it would have to do. He counted three of them, then a break, then three more.
He turned his attention quickly to the key the old man was fitting into the chunky door, lavishly molded into bas-reliefs of cherubs and what-not but grassgreen from long exposure to the elements. The old man was having a lot of trouble with it, but Chick didn't dare raise his eyes to watch what was going on, kept his head down. When it finally opened and the key dropped back to the ring again, his eye rode with it like something stuck to it, kept it separate from all the rest even after it was back in with them again, told it off from the end ones on each side of it. It was the fifth from one end of the bunch and seventh from the other, unless and until the old man inadvertently shifted the entire hoop around, of course—which would have been catastrophic but wasn't very likely. The hoop was nearly the size of a bicycle-wheel.
Chick tilted his head out behind the old man's back, caught Angle Face's eye and gave him the office. The gatekeeper was lugging the squealing, grinding door open with both arms, and the keys on the ring fluttered like ribbons with every move he made. Angel Face said, "Here, I'll help ya," as the door gave an unexpected lurch outward and he fell back against the gatekeeper. It was the old jostle-and-dip racket, which they'd had down to a science even before they were in long pants. Chick flipped that one certain key out from the rest with the point of his nail, deftly caught it on one bar of soggy chocolate, and ground the other one down on top of it. "Oops, sorry!" said Angel Face, and jerked the gateman forward again by one lapel, as if he'd been in danger of falling over, which he wasn't. Chick separated the two slabs, the released key fell back in line again, and by the time he had trailed into the dank place after the other two he had the tinfoil folded back in place again and his handkerchief wrapped around the two confectionery-bars to protect them from further softening through bodily warmth; they were in his breast-pocket, now, which was least liable to be affected.
The gatekeeper didn't linger long inside the place with them, but that wasn't necessary now any more. The floor of the vault was three feet below ground level, giving it a total height of about thirteen feet on the inside. Half a dozen steps led down from the doorway. The interior was in the shape of a cross, outlined by bastions of marble-faced granite that supported the dome. The head and one arm already contained coffins supported on trestles, Al Garrity and his wife respectively. Hers was evidently to go into the remaining arm. Macabre purple light filtered downward from a round tinted-glass opening in the exact center of the dome, so inaccessible from the floor that it might have been on some other planet. Even so, you could hardly see your hand in front of your face a short distance away from the open door. The place was icy cold and, once the door was closed, apparently air-tight. Chick wondered how long the supply of oxygen would last if anyone were shut up in there breathing it. Probably a week; certainly more than twenty-four hours. It was too leading a question to put the gatekeeper, especially in Angel Face's presence. He kept the thought to himself.
"You'd think," he heard the latter complain squeakily in the gloom, "they'd punch a winder or two in a place like this, let some light in."
"This one's about fifty years old," the old man explained. "Some of the newer ones they put up since has more light in 'em. There's one even has electric tapers at the head of the bier, going day and night, worked by battery."
"Ain't it unhealthy to leave the coffins above ground like this?" Chick asked.
"The bodies are preserved, embalmed in some way, I understand, before they're put in these kind of places. I s'pose if you was to open up one of these two they got here already you'd find 'em looking just like the day they got here. They don't change any, once there here."
A sound resembling "Brrh!" came from Angel Face's direction; he retreated toward the doorway rather more quickly than he'd come in. Chick took note of that fact, he could see that more buildup was going to be in order.
On the way out he sized up the thickness of the wall, where the entrance cut through it. A good solid two feet. And where the bastions encroached on the interior, God only knows! Pickaxes and even dynamite would have been out of the question. The only possible way was the one he'd decided on.
Angel Face was scribbling away industriously on the back of an envelope when he came out after him, but his face looked pretty strained. Chick pointed to the inner side of the bronze door, which faced outward while it stood ajar; the keyhole ran all the way through. He furtively spread two fingers, folded them again. A key for each, that meant. If it was intended for encouragement, it didn't seem to do much good, and Chick didn't care to risk asking the old man whether a key used from the inside would actually work or not. Who the hell had any business letting themselves out of a tomb? And apart from that, he had a hunch the answer would have been no anyway.
"Well," said the old man as he took leave of them at the door of his lodge, "I hope you two young fellas hev gotten what you came out here after."
Chick slung an arm about his shoulder and patted him reassuringly. "Sure did, old-timer, and much obliged to you. Well, be good."
"Hunh," the old reprobate snorted after them, "fat chance o' being anything but around these diggin's!"
They strolled aimlessly out the way they had come in, but with the ornamental stone and iron gateway once behind them Chick snapped into a sudden double-quick walk that rapidly took them out of sight. "C'mon, pick up your feet," he ordered, "before he feels for that pocket where he thinks he's got something!" He thrust the three tenners that he had temporarily loaned the old man back into his own trousers.
"Gee!" ejaculated Angel Face admiringly.
"He's too old to enjoy that much dough anyway," his partner told him.
It was dusk already when they came out of the subway. Chick, who was somewhat of a psychologist, wisely didn't give his companion time to argue about the undertaking from this point on. He could tell by the other's long face he was dying to back out, but he wouldn't give him the chance to get started. If he stayed with the idea long enough, he'd get used to it, caught up by the rush of their preparations.
"Got dough?" he demanded as they came out on the sidewalk.
"Yeah, but listen Chick—" quavered the other.
"Here, take this." Chick handed him two of the tens. "Go to a hardware store and get an awl and a screw-driver, good strong ones; better get each one separately in a different place."
"Wha—what's the idea?" Angel Face's teeth were clicking a little, although it was warm by the subway entrance.
"That's to let air in the coffin; shut up and let me do the talking. Then get a couple of those tin boxes that workmen carry their lunches in; get the biggest size they come in"—he saw another question trembling on his partner's lips, quickly forestalled it—"to lug the ice away in, what d'ya suppose! If two ain't enough, get three. Get 'm so one'll fit inside the other when I bring 'em out there tomorrow night. Now y' got that? See that y' stick with it. That's your part of the job. Mine'll be to take these candy-bars to a locksmith, have a pair of duplicate keys made, one for each of us—"
This, judging by the change that carrie over Angel Face's incorrectly named map, was the first good news he had heard since they had scanned the paper that morning.
"Oh, that's different," he sighed, "as long as I get one, too—"
"Sure, you can take it right in with you, hang it round your neck on a cord or something, just to set your mind at rest. That's what I tried to tip you off back there just now, the keyhole goes all the way through. But don't try using it ahead of time and ditching me, or I'll make you wish you'd stayed in there—"
"So help me, Chick, you know me better than that! It's only in case something goes wrong, so I won't be left bottled up in there for the rest of me—"
"Y' got nothing to worry about," snarled Chick impatiently. "I'll contact Revolving Larry for you and getcha a few grains of C. By the time you're through dreamin' you're Emperor of Ethiopia you'll be on your way out with the sparklers."
Angel Face even seemed to have his doubts about this angle of it. "I dunno—I never been a user. What does that stuff do to ya?"
"It'll make you stay quiet in the box, that's all I'm interested in. Now g'wan and do what I told you, and wait for me back at the room. I'll meet you there by twelve at the latest. This corpse beauty-parlor she's at oughta be closed for the night by then. We got a jimmy home, haven't we?
He didn't wait to be told but left with a jaunty step, bustling. Angel Face moved off slowly, droopily, like someone on his way to the dentist or the line-up.
Chick knew just where to have the keys made. He'd had jobs done there plenty of times in the past. It was in the basement of a side-street tenement and the guy kept his mouth closed, never asked questions, no matter what kind of a crazy mold you brought him. Chick carefully peeled the tinfoil off the warped chocolate-bars.
"Big fellow, ain't it," said the locksmith, examining the impression. "How many you gonna need?"
"Two, but I want 'em made one at a time. Bring the mold out to me after you finish the first one, the second one's gotta be a little different. "He wasn't putting anyone in the way of walking off with half-a-million dollars' worth of jewels under his nose, maybe only an hour before he got there. To hand Angel Face a key that really worked was like pleading for a double-cross. He'd see that he got out all right, but not till he was there to let him out.
"Take about twenty minutes apiece," said the locksmith.
"I'll wait. Get going on 'em."
The locksmith came back with one completed key for inspection, and the two halves of the mold, which he had to glaze with some kind of wax. "Sure it works, now?" Chick scowled.
"It fits that, that's all I can tell you."
"All right, then here's what you do now." He scraped a nailful of chocolate off the underside of each bar, trowelled it microscopically into the impression, smoothed it over, obliterating one of the three teeth the key had originally possessed. "Make it that way this time." He tucked the first one away to guard against confusion.
The locksmith gave him the mold back when he'd finished the job; and Chick kneaded the paraffined chocolate into a ball, dropped it down the sewer. Angel Face's key had a piece of twine looped to it, all ready to hang around his neck. An amulet against the horrors, that was about all it was really good for. At that, probably even the real one wouldn't work from the inside, so the deception was just an added touch of precaution.
Chick knew just where to put his finger on the peddler known as Revolving Larry, a nickname stemming from his habit of pirouetting to look all around him before making a sale. Chick passed him on the beat where he usually hung out, gave him the office. They met around the corner in a telephone booth in a cigar store about five minutes later. "Does C give you a jerky or a dreamy kick?" Chick breathed through a slit in the glass.
"Depends on how strong the whiff is," muttered Larry, thumbing through a directory hanging on a hook.
"Gimme a couple grains the kind you sell the saps, all baking soda."
Larry did his dervish act, although there was no one in the place. "Lemme in a minute," he muttered. Chick changed places with him in the booth, and Larry bent his leg and did something to one of his heels, holding the receiver to his ear with one hand. He handed Chick a little folded paper packet through the crack in the door, and Chick shoved a couple of bills in to him behind his back, turning to face the front of the store. Then he walked out, ignoring the frantic pecks on the glass that followed him. "Wholesale price," he growled over his shoulder.
The Hampton Funeral Parlor was on Broadway, which gave him a pretty bad jolt at first until he happened to glance a second time at the classified listing in the directory he was consulting. There was a branch chapel on the east side; it was the nearer of the two to the hotel she'd lived in. He played a hunch; it must be that one. A conservative old crow like that wouldn't be prepared for burial in a district full of blazing automobile sales-rooms. Even the second one, when he went over to look at it, was bad enough. It was dolled up so that it almost looked like a grill or tap-room from the outside. It had a blue neon sign and colored mosaic windows and you expected to see a hat-check girl just inside the entrance. But after midnight it was probably dark and inconspicuous enough for a couple of gents to crack without bringing down the town on their heads. He managed to size up the lock on the door without exactly loitering in front of it. A glass-cutter was out; in the first place the door-pane was wire-meshed, and in the second place it had to be done without leaving any tell-tale signs, otherwise there might be an embarrassing investigation when they opened up in the morning. Embarrassing for Angel Face, anyway. A jimmy ought to do the trick in five minutes; that kind of place didn't usually go in for electric burglar-alarms.
When he went back to the room he found Angel Face pacing back and forth until the place rattled. At least he'd brought in the lunch-boxes, the awl, and the screw-driver. Chick examined them, got them ready to take out, looked over the jimmy and packed that too. Angel Face's frantic meandering kept up all around him. "Quit that!" he snapped. He opened a brown-paper bag crammed with sandwiches he'd brought in with him. "Here, wrap yourself around these—"
Angel Face took out a thick chunk of ham and rye, pulled at it with his teeth once or twice, gave up the attempt. "I ain't hungry, I can't seem to swaller," he moaned.
"You're gonna be hungry!" warned Chick mercilessly. "It's your last chance to eat until t'morra night about this time. Here's your key, hang it around your neck." He tossed over the dummy with the two teeth. "I got some C for you too, but you take that the last thing, before you step in."
When they let themselves out of the house at one a.m., Angel Face followed docilely enough. Chick had also done a little theatrical browbeating and brought up a lot of past jobs which Angel Face wouldn't have been keen to have advertised. It hadn't seemed to have occurred to him that neither would Chick, for that matter. He wasn't very quick on the uptake. Chick glanced at him as they came out the front door of the rooming-house, swept his hat off with a backhand gesture and let it roll over to the curb. "They don't plant 'em in snap-brim felts, especially old ladies—and I ain't wearing two back when I leave!" Angel Face gulped silently and cast longing eyes at his late pride and joy. "You can get yourself a gold derby by Wednesday, like trombones wear, if you feel like it."
They had walked briskly past the Hampton Chapel, now dark and deserted, as if they had no idea of stopping there at all, then abruptly halted a few yards up the side-street. "Stay here up against the wall, and keep back," breathed the nerveless Chick. "Two of us ganged up at the entrance'd make too much of an eyeful. I'll whistle when I'm set."
Chick's cautious whistle came awfully soon, far too quickly to suit him. He sort of tottered around to where the entrance was and dove into the velvety darkness. Chick carefully closed the door again so it wouldn't be noticeable from the outside. "It was a pushover," he whispered, "I coulda almost done it with a quill toothpick!" He went toward the back, sparingly flickering a small torch once or twice, then gave a larger dose to the room beyond. "No outside windows," he said. "We can use their own current. Turn it on and close the door."
Angel Face was moistening his lips and having trouble with his Adam's apple, staring glassy-eyed at the two shrouded coffins the place contained. Otherwise it wasn't so bad as it might have been. Black and purple drapes hung from the walls, and the floor and ceiling were antiseptically spotless. The embalmers, if they actually did their work here, had removed all traces of it. Of the two coffins, one was on a table up against the wall, the other on a draped bier out in the middle, each with an identifying card pinned to its pall.
"Here she is," said Chick, peering through the glass pane, "all ready for delivery." Angel Face looked over his shoulder, then jerked back as though he'd just had an electric shock. A muffled veiled face had met his own through the glass. He turned sort of blue.
Chick went over to the second one, against the wall, stripped it, and callously sounded it with his knuckles. "This one's got somebody in it too," he announced jubilantly.
He unburdened himself of his tools, went back to the first coffin, and started in on the screws that held the lid. He heaved it a little out of line so that it overlapped the bier. "Get down under it and get going on some air-holes with that awl. Not too big, now! They'll have to be on the bottom so they won't be noticeable."
"Right while—while she's in it?" croaked Angel Face, folding to his knees.
"Certainly—we don't wanna be here all night!"
They gouged and prodded for a while in silence. "You ain't told me yet," Angel Face whimpered presently, "once I'm in it, how do I get out again? Do I hafta wait for you to come in and unscrew me?"
"Certainly not, haven'tcha got any sense at all? You take this same screw-driver I'm using in with you, under your arm or somewhere. Then you just bust the glass from the inside, stretch out your arms, and go to work all down the front of it yourself."
"I can't reach the bottom screws from where I'll be, how am I gonna bend—"
"Y'don't have to! Just get rid of the upper ones and then heave out, it'll split the rest of the way. I'm not gonna put them back all the way in."
He was still down underneath when he heard Chick put down the screw-driver and dislodge something. "There we are! Gimme a hand with this." He straightened up and looked.
A rather fragile doll-like figure lay revealed, decked in yellowed satin and swathed from head to foot in a long veil. They stood the lid up against the bier. "Get her out," ordered Chick, "while I get started on that second one over there." But Angel Face was more rigid than the form that lay on the satin coffin-lining, he couldn't lift a finger toward it.
"When the second coffin was unlidded, Chick came back and without a qualm picked up the mortal remains of Miss Alfreda Garrity with both arms. He carried her over to the second one, deposited her exactly on top of the rightful occupant, whipped off the veil, and then began to push and press downward like a shipping-clerk busily packing something in a crate. Angel Face was giving little moans like a man coming out of gas. "Don't look, if y'feel that way about it," his partner advised him briskly. "Get in there a while and try it out."
It took him ten minutes or so to screw the lid back on the one that now held the two of them, then he carefully dusted it with his handkerchief and came back. Angel Face had both legs in the coffin and was sitting up in it, hanging onto the sides with both hands, shivering but with his face glossy with sweat.
"Get all the way down—see if it fits!" Chick bore down'on one of his shoulders and flattened him out remorselessly. "Swell!" was the verdict. "You won't be a bit cramped. All right, did you punch them air-holes all the way through the quilting? If you didn't you'll suffocate. Now we'll try it out with the lid and veil on. Keep your head down!'
He dragged the veil over from beside the other coffin, sloshed it across the wincing Angel Face's countenance, and then began to pack it in and straighten it out around him, like a dutiful father tucking his offspring into bed. Then he heaved the heavy lid up off the floor, slapped it across the coffin, and fitted it in place. He peered down through the glass pane, studying the mummified onion-head that showed below. He retreated and gauged the effect from a distance, came back again on the opposite side. Finally he dislodged the lid once more. Angel Face instantly sat up, veil and all, like a jack-in-the-box. He tossed the veil back and blew out his breath.
"D'ja have any trouble getting air?" Chick wanted to know anxiously.
"There coulda been more ventilation."
"All right, stay there, we'll let a few more in to be on the safe side. Rest your head again, the closer I can bring 'em to your muzzle the better." He went to work from below with the screwdriver.
Angel Face suddenly yelped "Ow!" and reared up again, rubbing his ear.
"Good!" said Chick. "Right next to your face. If I put any more in the bottom'd look like a Swiss cheese. All right, get out and stretch, it's your last chance. Here's your bang of C. Sniff it quick."
Angel Face took the small packet, gratefully scrambled over the side.
Chick was examining the glass insert in the lid. "It's kinda thick at that. I think you better take something in with you to make sure of smashing it. I lamped one of them patented fire-extinguishers outside, wait a minute—"
When he came back he had a small iron mallet with two or three links of filed-off chain dangling from it. "Just a tap from this'll do the trick for you. There's room enough to swing your arms if you bring 'em up close to you. One more thing and we're set: watch your breathing, see that it don't flutter the veil. I'm gonna bulge it loose around you, so it won't get in the way of your beak." He scrutinized the other shrewdly. "Gettin' your kicks yet?"
Angel Face was standing perfectly still with a foolish vacant look on his face. There hadn't been enough cocaine in the dose to affect anyone used to it, but he wasn't an addict. "No wonder they call 'em attics," he admitted blithely. "I'm way up over your head. Gee, everything looks pretty!"
"Sure," agreed Chick. "Lookit the pretty coffin. Wanna get in? Come on."
"Oke," said Angel Face submissively. He climbed back in of his own accord. "How do I steer it?" he wanted to know.
"Just by lying still and wishin' where y'wanna go," the treacherous Chick assured him. He tucked in the large screwdriver, point-downward, under one armpit, the iron mallet under the other, once more arranged the veil about his henchman's head and shoulders, this time leaving a large pocket through which he could draw breath without moving it. "I'm in Arabia," was the last thing the voluntary corpse mumbled. "Come over'n see me sometime."
"Don't forget to have the ice loose when I show," ordered Chick. "See ya t'morra night about this time." He put the lid back on, and ten minutes later it was screwed as firmly in place as though it had never been disturbed. One coffin was as silent as the other. He gathered up his remaining tools and turned to go, with a backward glance at the one bier in the center. He could hold out, sure he could hold out. The C would wear off long before the funeral in the morning, of course, but that was all to the good. In his own senses he'd be even surer not to give himself away.
Chick turned the lights out and silently eased out of the room. He locked the front door on the inside, so they wouldn't even know it had been tampered with, let himself out of one of the ornamental windows on the side-street, pulled it closed after him. They'd probably never even notice it had been left unlatched all night.
He was standing across the street next morning at half past ten when the funeral procession started out for the cemetery. So were a sprinkling of others, drawn by curiosity. The dumbells probably thought the jewels were going right with her in the coffin. Fat chance. He saw it brought out and loaded onto the hearse, the tasselled pall still covering it. So far so good, he congratulated himself; they hadn't tumbled to anything after opening the parlor for the day, not even the air-holes on the bottom, and the worst was over now. Forty minutes more, and even the worst boner Angel Face could pull wouldn't be able to hurt them. He could bust out and stretch to his heart's content.
Only one car followed the hearse, probably with her lawyer in it. Chick let the small procession get started, then flagged a taxi and followed. Even if outsiders hadn't been barred during the duration of the services, he couldn't have risked going in anyway, on account of the danger of running into that gatekeeper again, but it wouldn't do any harm to swipe a bird's-eye view. The hearse and the limousine tailing it made almost indecent time, considering what they were, but he didn't have any trouble keeping up with them. He got out across the way from the main entrance just as they were going through, and parked himself at a refreshment-stand directly-opposite, over a short root-beer.
The gates were closed again the minute the cortege was inside, and the two guys loitering in front were easily identifiable as dicks. Chick saw them turn away several people who tried to get in. Then they came forward, the gates swung narrowly open again, and a small armored truck whizzed through without slowing down. There, Chick told himself, went Miss Garrity's diamonds. Smart guy, her lawyer; nobody could have tackled that truck on the outside without getting lead poisoning.
He hung around until the hearse, the limousine, and the truck had come out again, about twenty-five minutes later. They were all going much slower this time, and the gates stayed open behind them. It hadn't taken them long. You could tell the old doll had no relatives or family. The two dicks swung up onto the limousine running-boards and got in with the lawyer—and that was that. He and Angel Face had gotten away with it! Now there could no longer be any possible slip-up.
At midnight, with the big tin lunch-box that held two other ones under his arm, he bought more sandwiches. Not to feed the imprisoned Angel Face, but to spread out on top of the rocks when they were packed in the boxes, in case any nosey cops decided to take a gander.
It was a long ride to the end of the line, but he knew better than to take a taxi this time. The stem along the motor highway around and to the back of the Cedars of Lebanon, to where those billboards faced the mausoleum, was even longer, but he had all night. In about thirty minutes he caught up with them, three and then a blank space and then three more, lighted up by reflectors.
He turned off the road to his right and went straight forward, and in about ten minutes more the tall iron pike-fence of the cemetery blocked him. There wasn't a living soul for miles around; an occasional car sped by, way back there on the road. He pitched the telescoped lunch-boxes up over the fence, then he sprang for the lateral bar at the top of the railing, and chinned himself up and over. It wasn't hard. He dropped down soundlessly on the inside, picked up the lunch-boxes, and in another five minutes he was slipping the key into the bronze door.
You could tell how thick it was by how far the key went in. It went in until only the head showed, and the head was an awkward size—not quite big enough to slip his whole fist through and turn, and yet too big for just thumb and fingers to manage like an ordinary key. He caught it between the heels of his palms and tried grinding it around. It wouldn't budge. No wonder the gatekeeper had had a tough time of it yesterday afternoon! He gave it more pressure, digging in the side of his feet to brace him as he turned.
Had they changed the lock after the services? Had the chocolate-mold gotten just a little too soft and spread the impression? Maybe he should have brought a little oil with him. He was sweating like a mule, half from the effort and half from fright. He gave a final strangling heave, and there was a shattering click—but it wasn't the door. He was holding the key-handle in his bruised paws, and the rest of it was jammed immovably in the lock, where it had broken off short.
No one had ever been cursed the way that locksmith was for bungling the job. He swore and he almost wept, and he clawed and dug at it, and he couldn't get it out—it was wedged tight in the lock, not a sixteenth of an inch protruded. Then he thought of the glass skylight, up on the exact center of that rounded inaccessible dome. He went stumbling off through the darkness.
It was nearly three when he was back again, with the length of rope coiled up around his middle under his coat. He unwound it, paid it out around him on the ground. There weren't any trees near enough, so he had to use that angel blowing a trumpet over the door. He put a slip-knot in the rope, hooked the angel easily enough, and got up there on the periphery of the dome. Then he brought the rope up after him. He got up on the dome by cat-walking around to the opposite side from the angel and then pulling himself up with the rope taut across the top. One big kick and a lot of little ones emptied the opening of the violet glass. The crash coming up from inside was muffled. It was pitch-black below. He dropped the rope down in, gave it a half-twist around his wrist, let himself in after and began to swing wildly around going down it.
Suddenly all tension was out of the rope and he was hurtling down, bringing it squirming loosely after him. He would have broken his back, but he hit a large wreath of flowers on top of a coffin. One of the trestles supporting it broke and it boomed to the floor. He and gardenias and leaves and ribbons and velvet pall all went sliding down it to the mosaic floor. An instant later the stone angel's head dropped like a bomb a foot away from his own. It was enough to have brained him if it had touched him.
He was scared sick, and aching all over. "Angel!" he rasped hoarsely, spitting out leaves and gardenia petals, "Angel! Are y'out? J'get hit?" No answer. He fumbled for his torch—thank God it worked!—and shot streaks of white light wildly around the place, creating ghastly shadows of his own making. Her mother's coffin was there in one wing and her father's in the other, like yesterday, and the rocks were there in an old trunk, with the lid left up. And this—this third coffin that he'd hit, that he was on now. Angel Face should have been out of it by now, long ago—but it was still sealed up! Had he croaked in it?
Bruised as he was he scrambled to his feet, wildly swept aside the leaves and flowers and the velvet pall, flicked his beam up and down the bared casket. A scream choked off in his larynx—there was no glass insert, no air-holes. It was the other coffin, the one he'd put her in with the unknown!
What followed was a madhouse scene. He set the torch down at an angle, picked up the chipped angel's head, crashed it down on the lid again and again, until the wood shattered, splintered, and he could claw it off with his bare, bleeding hands. There beneath his eyes was the gaunt but rouged and placid face of Miss Alfreda Garrity, teeth showing in a faintly sardonic smile. She could afford to smile; she'd put one over on them, even in death—landed in her own tomb after all, through some ghastly blunder at the mortician's. Maybe he'd been the means of it himself: those two palls, each with a little card pinned to it. He must have transposed them in his hurry last night, and the box with the two in it weighed as much as the big one she'd ordered for herself. And they hadn't looked! Incredible as it sounded, they hadn't looked to make sure, had carried it out with the pall over it, and even here hadn't uncovered it, in a hurry to get rid of the old eccentric, forgetting to give her the eternal gander through the glass at her rocks that she'd wanted!
What difference did it make how it happened, or that it had never happened before and might never happen again after this— it had happened now! And he was in here, bottled up in his stooge's place, with a broken rope and nothing to cast it over, no way of getting back up again! Not even the mallet and screwdriver he'd provided the other guy with! The scream came then, without choking off short, and then another and another, until he was out of them and his raw vocal cords couldn't make any more sounds and daylight showed through the shattered skylight, so near and yet so out of reach. He began banging the angel's head against the bronze door, until it was just little pebbles and the muscles of his arms were useless.
It was afternoon when they cut through the door with blow-torches. Cops and dicks had never looked so good to him before in his life. He wanted twenty years in prison, anything, if only they'd take him out of here. He was, they told him, pretty likely to get what he wanted—with his past record. He was groveling on the floor, whimpering, half batty, picking up shiny pieces of jewelry and letting them dribble through his fingers again. They almost felt sorry for him themselves.
Her lawyer was there with them, too, breathing smoke and flame— maybe because some little scheme of his own had miscarried. "Outrageous! Sickening!" he stormed. "I knew something like this was bound to happen, with all that damnable publicity her will got—"
"Other coffin," the haggard Chick kept moaning, "other coffin." His voice came back when someone gave him a shot of whisky, rose to a screech. "The other coffin! My partner's in it! There's a living man in it, I tell you! They got them mixed. Phone that place! Stop them before they—"
One of the dicks raced off. They met him near the entrance, as they were leading Chick out. His face was a funny green color, and he could hardly talk either now. "They—they planted it at three o'clock yesterday afternoon, at Hillcrest Cemetery, out on Long Island—"
"In the ground?" someone asked in a sick voice.
"Six feet under."
"God in Heaven!" shuddered Staunton, the lawyer. "What abysmal fools these crooks are sometimes! All for a mess of paste. They might have known I wouldn't put the real ones in there, will or no will! They've been safely tucked away in a vault since the night she died." He broke off suddenly. "Hold that man up, I think he's going to collapse."