Adventures of a Professional Corpse

by H. Bedford-Jones

  Adventures of a Professional Corpse

  By H. BEDFORD-JONES

  Fiction Hunter Press

  2014

  “The Artificial Honeymoon” was originally published in Weird Tales Vol. 35, No. 4, July, 1940.

  “The Blind Farmer and the Strip Dancer” was originally published in Weird Tales Vol. 35, No. 5, September, 1940.

  “The Wife of the Humorous Gangster” was originally published in Weird Tales Vol. 35, No. 6, November, 1940.

  “The Affair of the Shuteye Medium” was originally published in Weird Tales Vol. 35, No. 8, March, 1941.

  Compilation copyright © 2014 Fiction Hunter Press. All rights reserved.

  Contents

  1.

  The Artificial Honeymoon

  2.

  The Blind Farmer and the Strip Dancer

  3.

  The Wife of the Humorous Gangster

  4.

  The Affair of the Shuteye Medium

  1.

  The Artificial Honeymoon

  FOR twelve years I’ve earned an honest living in a strange, perhaps a horrible fashion. Nobody in the world has ever before followed my profession.

  James F. Bronson is the name. I’ve played a chief part in the most dramatic situations, the most pitiful and heart-rending situations, which the human brain could conceive; and in each case I’ve been quite oblivious to all that went on. For, during these twelve years, I’ve been a professional corpse—a walking dead man.

  You may possibly have noticed the advertisement I’ve run in newspapers from time to time, all over the country. You may have wondered what it meant. It was quite discreetly worded. From the very beginning I’ve tried to guard against any connection with crooked enterprise. As appears in the instance of the Shuteye Medium. I didn’t always succeed; and elsewhere I may have been imposed upon; but to the best of my knowledge I’ve never been employed toward the harm of anyone, or in contravention of the law.

  Here’s a sample of my advertisement:

  Personal!—It is possible to simulate death, as I can demonstrate to interested parties. Endorsement of medical profession, absolute discretion. All work confidential but must be legal and subject to closest investigation. News Box B543.

  3439

  Had I been unscrupulous, I could have amassed a fortune through this blind ad. Each time it appeared, I’ve received tempting offers, some frankly illegal and others with some illegal aspect in the background.

  I’ve never accepted one of these offers. In relating a few of my most remarkable experiences, I must protect my own identity and that of my clients; otherwise, no details will be changed or hidden. For example, in the story of the blind farmer and the strip dancer, the lady concerned is now an internationally known movie star. It would be a dastardly act even to hint at her identity. Nor do I want to do myself out of a job. Despite the thirty-one times I have been pronounced dead, and the seven times I’ve actually been buried, I am still in pursuit of shoes for the baby.

  Before taking up my first case, the curious account of the artificial honeymoon, let me briefly sketch my history and the discovery of my singular ability.

  I was born on a farm in western Canada, and had a fair education, with two years of college, before my father died and the family went broke. After drifting around and never noticing anything extraordinary about myself, I came back to the farm at the age of twenty-three, to support the women folks. I was broke. We were all broke.

  I had an uncle who was also a drifter. He had been in South America, and turned up one fine day with a trunk full of junk, a lot of wild stories, and a cough that killed him two months later.

  He had brought from Ecuador two tiny, shrunken human heads, the size of a billiard ball. He sent these off to a museum and the money helped to bury him. Among other things he had a bottle made from a gourd and filled with liquid, which he said was a sacred drink used by the Indians in Ecuador to produce dreams. He expected to make money out of it, but died before he could get anywhere with his schemes.

  After his death I was going through his effects, hoping to find something that we might sell, for we had bitter need of money.

  I came on the gourd bottle and did what only a young fool would do: I sampled it. Pouring out some of the stuff I tasted it. As it seemed harmless and I was curious to see what dreams it would produce, I swallowed the whole dose.

  It burned like fire. I became rapidly drowsy, and frightfully scared. I stumbled downstairs, told the folks what I had done, yelled that I was poisoned, and then keeled over, dead to the world.

  It seemed that I really was dead. Naturally skinny and none too strong, I must have looked terrible. They said that my lips were really blue.

  The doctor came the six miles from town in record time. He took one look at me, put his stethoscope to my chest, felt for my pulse, and said I was dead. He stuck a pin in me, and was sure of it. He hauled open my shirt and ran his fingernail over my abdomen, and there was no reflex.

  Then he turned up my eyelid, held a mirror to my nose, and changed his mind at once.

  “Hello! Something queer about this; he’s breathing. And his pupil’s not dilated,” he exclaimed. “Where’s that stuff he took? Where did it come from? What is it?”

  NOBODY had the answers, of course. Neither did he, but he was a shrewd man. He gave me a very careful examination, and presently slid an injection into me. It was, as he told me later, a fortieth grain of atropine and caffeine sodium benzoate. This brought me around. Had it not been for the eye-pupil and the mirror test, he would have buried me.

  My only sensation was of having been asleep, and I had no ill effects. Some days later he told me in plain words what a damned young fool I was, and what was amiss with me.

  “Ever been examined for life insurance?”

  “Never could afford luxuries, doc,” I admitted.

  “Hm! A queer case, Bronson; I’d better make it clear to you. First, you have bradycardia and auricular fibrilation; in plain English, a slow heart, beating barely forty to the minute, but it flutters instead of beating. Barrel chest; the heart is back from the ribs and the stethoscope doesn’t get it. Naturally not,” he added grimly, “because your heart is on the right side.”

  This was before it had become fashionable to have the heart thus misplaced.

  As he explained, the slow heart and fluttering circulation killed any pulse, and accounted for my usual pallor and my bluish lips. Also, the liquid I had taken was enough to kill anyone; a little more might have actually killed me.

  “I took a sample of that stuff and had it analyzed. Here’s what is in the infernal concoction,” and he handed me the report of the analysis. “The protopine, of course, killed the sensory nerves; there was no abdominal reflex. You had me fooled for a minute. Luckily I gave you the right hypodermic to bring you around. Don’t be such a fool again. The minute you get home throw that cursed liquid of yours away.”

  I did nothing of the sort. Why not? Simply because, at the time, I thought I might capitalize the local notoriety this experience was bringing me. I thought of writing a story about it, and I might need the liquid as proof. So I kept it. Here is the analysis he gave me:

  Anhalonium (Peyotl)—10%

  Protopine—8%

  Bhang—15%

  Alcohol (Tequila)—67%

  Inorganic salts, minute.

  Coloring matter, type undetermined.

  The local newspaper told about the young farmer who had been dead and was alive, with his heart in the wrong place. Other newspapers copied the story. A Scotch surgeon came out from Edmonton to investigate me. He thumped me, measured me, examined me minutely, and after grudgingly confirming
the opinion of the local doctor, went away. (Not long ago I met him again in Los Angeles, but he failed to recognize me.) Obviously, the theory was entirely correct, for since then it has served in all my contacts with the medical fraternity.

  This misadventure caused me great terror; the discovery of my peculiar physical formation preyed upon me and frightened me. And yet, as a direct result of my local notoriety, I received the first lucrative inkling that I need not consider myself doomed to an untimely end. Two men in a car with a United States license showed up at the farm a few days later on, and asked for me.

  THE driver was a husky, vigorous man with shrewd gimlet eyes. His left hand was gloved and dead; it was an artificial limb, but he could work its mechanical fingers very cleverly. His name was Earl Carter, and he was an attorney from the States. The man with him was a physician whom he had brought out from Edmonton.

  Well aware that the family would not approve his errand, Carter got me to go out for a ride with them. Once we were out of sight from the house he drew up alongside the road. The two of them pumped me, and I was ready enough to talk about my experience. Presently Carter looked at the doctor, who nodded.

  “I’d chance it, yes.”

  “All right.” Carter handed me a crisp hundred-dollar bill. “Bronson, this is yours if you’ll get that gourd bottle, take a dose, and show us you can play dead. The doctor here will take care of you and bring you around. If you can do the trick I’ll pay you a thousand more and all expenses. I want you to go home with me and pull off the stunt once again, under certain conditions. I’ll need you for perhaps a month. It’s good pay.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, in swift alarm. “Take a chance on killing myself for a hundred dollars?”

  “Are you worth that much alive?” Carter asked grimly. “Think it over, young man.”

  He made no other argument, to his credit, and none was needed. The thought of the money overbalanced my fears; at the moment, we actually had no food in the house. I made him sign an agreement to take care of all funeral expenses if I really died, however.

  Then we drove back home. I sneaked out the gourd bottle, and we went to town. In a hotel room I took a dose of the stuff—and went to sleep. First, the doctor had gone over me very carefully. He was taking no chances.

  When I woke up again the hundred was mine. Carter admitted, too, that he had been frightened stiff by the result of the experiment. The doctor was more enthusiastic about it. I heard them talking.

  “The eyes could be taken care of,” the medico was saying. “The only thing he responds to is the mirror test, otherwise. That is, if you exclude a very critical examination.”

  Carter grunted. “Yeah? What would take care of the eyes, then?”

  “Homatropine would dilate the pupils as in death, and a little cocaine with it would obviate any corneal reflex. Except for the breathing, he was to all appearance a dead man. He could stand no fluoroscopic examination, naturally; but he’d fool many medical practitioners, especially if no laboratory facilities were at hand. A most remarkable case!”

  Carter knew now that I could do what he wanted. I knew that the stunt produced no very bad effects on me, so my terror was gone.

  In a very general way only, Earl Carter told me what he desired. He gave me five hundred dollars advance pay, which I turned over to the family, and we started in his car for the States.

  This drive marked the great turning point in my life.

  Carter would not detail his plans, but whatever they might be, I could guess that they held nothing petty or unlawful. This man was no piker. He carried a spacious air. His vast energy, his driving power, were phenomenal, and extended in a dozen different directions. He could turn his hand, even his mechanical hand, to anything, and become a master. His air of entire assurance was no mere braggadocio. It held something overwhelming. We became real friends on that trip, and Carter talked to me like a father.

  “With this damnable gift of yours, Bronson, you’ll have to keep a tight check-rein on yourself. If you fell into the wrong hands, if you became a tool for unscrupulous crooks, you could make a raft of money; watch out! God knows I’m no angel, and I don’t believe in much of anything, but this is something that frightens me.”

  “You should worry,” I said with youthful cynicism.

  He gave me a hard look. “You don’t get it. Bronson, whatever powers there may be in heaven or hell keep an eye on such things. Of this I’m convinced. I can’t explain it; you’re a farmer, but you can’t explain how a blade of corn comes up out of a seed kernel. Still, you know it does. There’s a strange and terrible certainty in the law of compensation, young man. If you should turn yourself to illegal uses, look out! I don’t know what would happen, but I’d hate to be in your shoes. You can make money, and make it straight. Remember that, always.”

  Over and over, the lawyer harped on this theme, and drove it heavily into me. He was a fine man, the squarest man I had ever known, even if he was full of legal tricks. Square in a man’s sense of the word. Angular, hard, straight as a die—foursquare.

  He admitted freely that he did not serve the law, but made it serve him, and at times ran pretty close to the wind. He handed out none of the old blarney about legal ethics, which is something designed merely to help rook the sucker: On that drive he gave me a liberal education in the cold, ugly, hard-rock racket of lawyers; and more, he showed me how definitely a man must live by his own code of ethics if he is to come out on top.

  If Earl Carter is still alive and reads this story I want him to realize how deeply his words sank into me, and what fruit they bore. I owe that man a great deal.

  Before reaching the city that was our destination, we had a week’s drive. In this time I came to learn a lot about Carter’s business. He was not a mouthpiece for crooks, as he had little or no criminal practice, and wanted none. He did specialize in helping people who were in a jam—and who could pay heavily for the help.

  He drilled into me that the prime business of a lawyer is to get his client’s money, and that plenty of big-time legal lights with wealthy clients simply made use of the law to serve the wishes of those clients. This was only a tiny corner of the racket, but Earl Carter had turned it into a mighty big corner, for himself. No matter how respected or innocent a person might be, the law could trap him and squeeze him—unless he happened to have an attorney who could outsmart the law.

  “And I’m the outsmarter, you bet,” Carter told me quite frankly. We drew pretty close together in those days. “I get the sucker off the hook, and he pays through the nose for it. Thirty per cent of all business in America is run on the principle that the fool and his money might as well be parted now. We’ve passed the age of simple honesty; it went out with muttonchop whiskers. Only, I get his money by saving him from his folly.”

  “Where do I come in?” was my question.

  He grinned at me. “You just obey orders. Right now, I’ve got a whopping big case on hand that should never come into court. That’s why I took a long trip by myself; I need to cool off my brain and get ideas. When I found you, I got ’em. From the angle of legal ethics and such bunk, I ought to be shot for what I’ve got in mind. There’s just one thing about it to remember. It’s going to get an innocent person clear of a lousy mess. And if you ask me, that’s pretty damned good ethics all by itself.”

  Before crossing the border, we stopped a couple of days in a small town. How Carter managed it, I can only surmise. When we left there, however, I had a legalized birth certificate in the name of Arthur Sullivan. As such, I came into the United States with him, and I continued to be Arthur Sullivan for some little time thereafter.

  At a suburban station a few miles outside his home city, Carter let me out.

  “Ride into town and go to the Grand Hotel,” he said. “Get yourself some clothes and study the stock market; you’re a broker from San Francisco and you never heard of me. Let your mustache grow. You’ll hear from me in a week.”

  I obeyed orders. The Gr
and Hotel deserved its name; I spent money, but did not pad my swindle sheet. The mustache made a great change in my appearance, and I hung around board rooms and learned the jargon of the market, for I was anxious to make good at this job. Meantime, I heard a lot about the Petty case.

  It was the biggest, juiciest and hottest scandal that had ever struck town, and when it came to trial promised to be still hotter.

  Colonel Petty had died three years before, leaving a sister, a widow and a daughter. He was many times a millionaire, owning about a third of everything in the city, and his estate all went to his daughter, under the guardianship of his widow, who had plenty in her own right. And now the sister, who was one of these thin-lipped women, had chipped in to demand the guardianship, the money and the daughter, alleging that the widow was an improper person to have the child, and so forth. And they had the goods on her, too.

  Around the hotel I had met a doctor named Slausson, who knew everybody in town, and I half suspected that Carter had steered him on me. We got pretty well acquainted.

  “But what’s the scrap about?” I asked Slausson, as we talked over the Petty case. “I understand this daughter is eighteen. Whoever wins would only get to handle the estate for three years or less. And can’t she pick her own guardian?”

  “Not in this state.” Slausson grinned. “Minors are protected in this state, you bet! But you don’t get the idea. Nobody gives a damn about the girl; it’s the shakedown. This old maid sister, Tabitha Petty, has the biggest law firm in the West handling her charges. And those boys are slick. Mrs. Petty, the widow, is a frivolous, pleasant, harmless woman who likes a good time and spends her money. When they get her into court, they’ll just tear her wide open, see? Misconduct, you bet, real or faked. Probably faked, if you ask me. It’ll be red hot, too. She faces newspaper notoriety of the worst kind. She’s sure to lose the girl, who adores her, and she’ll be branded for life—unless she digs into her wad and settles things. Earl Carter won’t let her get into court. He’ll settle.”