Groucho Marx, King of the Jungle

by Ron Goulart

  “This is an extremely heavy shovel,” mentioned Groucho, who was carrying it. “When you suggested bringing one along, I envisioned one of those lightweight shovels that one takes to the beach along with a tin pail.”

  “Colorful, but not too good for long-term digging.” I was hefting a canvas knapsack containing a couple of flashlights, my old Boy Scout compass, and a pastrami sandwich that Groucho had happened to have in his glove compartment.

  The fog was chill, smelling of grass and cow manure.

  On our right loomed up a high hurricane fence. “According to the fabled Spellman treasure map, the rear gate will pop up soon,” said Groucho.

  “And there aren’t supposed to be any guards back here.”

  “Are you certain of that, Rollo? I’d hate to be shot in this rural setting,” he said. “A headline like ‘Marx Felled in Cow Pasture’ doesn’t have any zing. Come to think of it, I haven’t had much zing myself since, oh, about the second year of the Coolidge administration.”

  “This afternoon I called somebody I know in the local sheriff’s office. Told him I was researching an article on the Benson jungle, and I just happened to ask about the guard setup,” I explained. “There’s the gate.”

  Set in the thick wire fence was a sturdy metal gate.

  Putting down my knapsack, I fetched out my lock picks. The fog seemed to be closing in on us.

  Groucho leaned on the handle of the shovel, striking a rustic pose, and watched me tinker with the lock. “I declare, Mr. Raffles, it’s just so thrilling to see you at work,” he said. “That, by the way, was a sample of the Scarlett O’Hara accent your missus forbade me from demonstrating earlier.”

  “I didn’t know Scarlett O’Hara was Italian.” Returning the picks to my pocket, I turned the handle. With a faint creak, the gate opened inward.

  A narrow trail led into the dark, misty jungle. Tall trees rose up on each side, their tops lost in the fog. There were palm trees and trees I still couldn’t identify, thick brush, hanging vines, tropical flowers. You could hear small creatures scurrying over dry leaves and fallen branches.

  As I quietly shut the heavy gate, a louder thrashing and fluttering commenced on the right of us.

  “Lions would make more noise than that, would they not?” inquired Groucho.

  “Sure, and they’d probably roar.”

  “Ah, yes, much the way Leo does at the commencement of each and every MGM movie,” said Groucho. “Did you know that when Leo is on vacation Louis B. Mayer used to stand in for him. MGM had to stop that, because women, children, and many weak-hearted men ran screaming in terror from motion picture palaces as soon as Mayer gave forth. If you’ve never experienced a Louis B. Mayer growl, you haven’t—”

  “Let’s locate the pool.” I found a flashlight in my knapsack, took the copy Jane had made of Spellman’s map from my jacket pocket.

  “Did your lawman chum have any details to pass along about the animal denizens of this jungle?” asked Groucho as we moved slowly along the mossy trail. “To be more specific, are there any large wild animals roaming loose?”

  “No, nothing but assorted wild birds and a few tame monkeys.”

  “Small monkeys?”

  “Tiny ones.”

  “Good, because ever since I was a wee infant, I’ve had an unnatural fear of large apes,” he admitted. “For instance, the first time I met King Kong, at a cocktail party his studio threw for him, I nearly jumped out of my skin. My dermatologist later told me, considering the state of my epidermis, that jumping out of my skin wouldn’t have been a bad idea.” He stopped, glancing off to the left. “Did you hear a splash from over yonder?”

  “Yeah, sounded like something just fell into … maybe a pond.”

  “Let us explore. Pass me a flashlight.”

  I took the other flash out of the knapsack, handed it to him. “This thing smells of pastrami.”

  “No respectable expedition is complete without a goodly supply of pastrami.” Clicking on the light, he turned the beam on the jungle next to him. “Some explorers prefer liverwurst, but for me pastrami is the sandwich of choice. When my colleagues and I discovered King Tut’s delicatessen, we carried … what ho, Franklin.”

  We’d been moving along between tall trees, and now we saw in a small clearing up ahead a pond that was about twenty yards in diameter. A large frog gave an indignant croak and leaped into the dark water, producing a gulping splash.

  I circled the pond, moving to the far side. I took out my compass and a tape measure. After a moment I pointed and said, “If this is the body of water we want, we have to go in this direction to dig.”

  Using the metal tape measure, I measured out twenty-one feet. That brought us to a patch of ground in another small clearing amidst the high, thick trees.

  “This could well be the spot,” said Groucho, using the beam of his flash to point at the ground.

  Over a large patch of ground, the moss was sparser and not as thick as the surrounding growth, and it was a slightly different shade of green.

  “I do hate to be gloomy,” said Groucho, “yet I can’t help noticing that this plot of ground is about the size of an average grave.”

  “I was thinking that, too.”

  “Let us be up and digging.” He handed me the shovel.

  Rubbing his hands together, Groucho said, “Let me know when it’s my turn with the shovel, Rollo.” He was sitting on a fallen log, his back resting against a tree trunk.

  I’d cleared away about two feet of earth from the suspected burial spot. “If we don’t find something pretty quick, I’ll … oops.”

  The tip of the shovel had struck something that wasn’t dirt. Laying the shovel down beside the newborn hole in the ground, I crouched and started scooping away earth with my hands.

  Groucho got up, moving closer. Clicking his flashlight back on and shining it down. “That looks mighty like part of a blanket.”

  A section of a thick plaid blanket, much the worse for having been buried for some time, was showing through. It smelled of damp earth. And I was noticing the odor of something else.

  As I rubbed more clumps of dirt away, my right hand tore off a section of the rotting cloth. “Jesus,” I said, jerking back.

  The remains of a hand showed through the rent in the plaid blanket.

  “We seem to have found the missing accountant,” observed Groucho in a very subdued voice.

  In another twenty minutes or so, we had the bundled body up out of its lonesome grave.

  While Groucho watched, I, a bit gingerly I admit, unwrapped the makeshift shroud. From what was left of the dead man, it was possible to conclude that he was quite probably Doug Cahan. There were two bullet holes in the chest of the muddy white shirt he was wearing, ringed with blackened blots of long-dried blood.

  After standing away from the corpse for a moment and taking in a few breaths of misty air, I knelt again to make a search of what remained of the suit he was wearing. In a rotting breast pocket of the jacket, I found a black-leather wallet encrusted with splotches of dead-white mildew.

  Behind a stained glassine panel was a California state driver’s license. “‘Douglas Cahan,’” I read. “‘Must wear corrective lenses.’”

  “His sister was right,” said Groucho. “He never stole any money.”

  “Well, if he did steal any, he never got very far with it.” Wrapping the dead man’s wallet in my handkerchief, I slipped it into my coat pocket. “Now we have to get the hell out of this jungle and contact the nearest sheriff’s substation.”

  “Indeed? I was planning to rush home and hide under the bed for a spell. But, yes, your suggestion is a better—”

  That was as far as he got.

  From off to our left came a rifle shot.

  Twenty-seven

  The slug smacked into the trunk of a tree about three feet from where Groucho was standing. By the time the second rifle shot came whistling out of the foggy darkness, I was stretched out on the damp ground nex
t to the corpse of the no-longer-missing accountant. I’d also clicked off my flashlight.

  “Are you still among the living?” Groucho inquired in a low voice. “I’m fairly certain I am.”

  “So far, yeah.” Using my elbows to propel me, I made my way across the jungle floor to where he was crouching in the brush.

  “Apparently they don’t take kindly to grave robbers in these parts.”

  “This could be one of the guards,” I said, “or somebody from the main house.”

  “Whoever it is, Rollo, I doubt they’re in the mood to negotiate. Therefore an orderly retreat is called for.”

  “We can’t go back the way we came, since our rifleman is between us and the trail to the rear gate.”

  “We’ll go deeper into the foliage, try to circle back.”

  Crouched low, Groucho and I moved in among the thickness of trees that surrounded the extemporaneous grave site. We were hoping the thick fog would swallow us up and make us hard to find.

  After less than a minute another shot was fired. This one tore through a stand of high ferns some five or six feet ahead of us.

  “He’s not giving up,” I whispered as we kept moving deeper into the night jungle.

  “This reminds me of an old RKO talkie entitled The Most Dangerous Game,” observed Groucho in a low voice. “Only for that chase through the jungle, Joel McCrea had Fay Wray for a companion and not a callow screenwriter.”

  “That’s funny, I thought that I was playing the Joel McCrea part, and I was about to complain about having a superannuated comedian for a companion instead of Fay Wray.”

  “Let’s try a short cut.” Groucho dodged to the right, easing between the boles of two massive trees.

  A dangling vine slapped wetly across my face as I followed.

  We cut a zigzag swatch through the jungle for a few quiet minutes.

  Suddenly, up ahead, several frightened night birds went squawking and flapping up from the low branches of a tall tree.

  About twenty seconds after that, we heard heavy footfalls from some distance behind us.

  “Our would-be assassin’s picked up our scent once again,” remarked Groucho.

  We changed course once more. I realized I’d long since lost any idea of what direction we were heading. Maybe I’d get a chance, eventually, to consult my venerable compass.

  “This is nowhere near as much fun as tiptoeing through the tulips.” observed Groucho after a moment.

  I could no longer hear the sound of the fellow who was hunting us. But that didn’t mean we were anywhere near being safe.

  After another few minutes we reached another small clearing. Glancing up, I noticed, very blurred and fuzzy through the fog, a tree house built in the limbs of a sturdy tree. “Hey, this must be the hut Spellman indicated on his map.”

  “It might make a temporary hiding place.”

  “We’ll give it a try.” I sprinted across the sward, grabbed the end of the rope ladder that dangled down from the platform porch of the Ty-Gor tree house that had been installed here for the last movie. I held it tight. “You first, Groucho.”

  “The last ladder I climbed was on a fire escape,” he said, starting to ascend. “That time I was coming down to avoid an unexpected husband.”

  I went up after him.

  Groucho was squatting on the porch, catching his breath. “Too bad Maureen O’Sullivan isn’t at home.”

  “Wrong jungle man series,” I pointed out.

  “Alas, so it is.”

  We went inside the two-room hut.

  “I don’t know if I want to sign a lease on this place or not,” said Groucho, glancing around at the bamboo walls and the raw-wood furniture. “It’s cozy enough, but there are far too many gunmen in the neighborhood.”

  “Wonder why Spellman mentioned this tree hut on his map!”

  “Either he was planning to settle down amidst the palms, or he possibly hid something here.”

  “Until it’s safe to emerge, let’s, making no noise, look around.”

  “Yes, Rollo, that’ll pass the time better than telling ghost stories around the campfire.”

  Beneath a straw mat in the second room was another gray envelope. Guardedly using my flash, I determined that it contained two more photos. These, however, didn’t show romantic encounters but a burial.

  Jack Benson was digging the grave we’d found near the pond. Lying beside it, still not enshrouded in the plaid blanket, was Doug Cahan’s body. He was easily recognizable at that stage. Standing next to the corpse was Alicia Benson, and she was smiling.

  “I believe,” said Groucho, looking over my shoulder, “this is what sleuths from time immemorial have called a pretty kettle of fish.”

  “It gives the Bensons a terrific motive for killing Spellman,” I said quietly. “Spellman spotted them getting rid of Cahan’s body, took some infrared shots, and subsequently blackmailed Alicia.”

  “And she apparently shot the accountant when he informed her they were no longer an item,” added Groucho. “After all, no self-respecting lass likes to be jilted. And a crazy, violent-tempered young lady like Alicia Benson is the type who shoots boyfriends who try to ditch her.”

  “That’s likely what happened. When she got tired of paying blackmail to Spellman, she snuck onto the Warlock lot and shot him.”

  “More than likely smuggling herself in with that load of palm trees that was sent over from this very jungle in which we find ourselves cowering.”

  I whispered, “Quiet for a minute.”

  From the jungle below the tree hut came the sound of someone walking over fallen leaves. Walking slowly and carefully.

  I automatically held my breath.

  Two very long minutes passed.

  The footsteps were growing fainter.

  “I’d give a sigh of relief,” said Groucho, “but I’m afraid he’d hear it.”

  We sat in silence for a good ten minutes more before deciding to leave the tree hut.

  While up in the tree, I’d thought of another way to get ourselves out of this mess.

  The fog followed us out of the jungle.

  Moving through swirls of gray, Groucho and I began sneaking toward the Arthur Wright Benson, Inc., office building. There wasn’t a single light showing inside.

  Groucho, by exercising considerable willpower, refrained from saying anything while we approached the building.

  I crouched at the front door, and, after trying the doorknob, I went to work on the lock with a couple of my picks. That took less than two minutes.

  The heavy door opened inward with nary a sound. We slipped inside the building, and I eased the door shut.

  Clicking on his flashlight, Groucho shined the beam on the corridor. “There ought to be a telephone in Benson’s office,” he concluded after illuminating the door of the nearest office.

  The door of Arthur Wright Benson’s executive office wasn’t locked. We went in.

  My flash located a phone sitting atop the large darkwood desk.

  “Golly, I bet there are all sorts of lovely pictures of Ty-Gor decorating the walls,” said Groucho. “If only we dared turn on the lights, I could feast my eyes. Or there might be an icebox full of sandwiches, and I could feast my—”

  “I’ll call my friend with the sheriff’s office,” I said, picking up the receiver. “And tell him we’ve found Doug Cahan.”

  Twenty-eight

  We were heading for the office door when all the lights came blazing on.

  “Trespassing is a serious offense,” said Jack Benson, who was standing in the open doorway with a hunting rifle tucked under his right arm.

  Groucho glanced slowly at the walls of the big office. “By Jove, I was dead right,” he said. “Pictures of Ty-Gor in abundance. Though now that I give it some consideration, I probably shouldn’t have used the phrase ‘dead right.’”

  There were several-dozen framed pictures of the jungle king on the buff-colored walls. Photos of assorted actors, book jackets, pain
tings, and drawings.

  “In these parts,” Arthur Wright Benson’s son informed us, “it’s the custom to shoot prowlers. I think we’ll do that. Later we’ll be tearful and apologetic about not recognizing you buffoons until it was too late. We’ll be saddened, you’ll be dead.”

  “You won’t be able to bury us the way you did Doug Cahan,” I pointed out.

  “C’mon, shoot them, Jack.” Alicia Benson, wearing dark slacks and a navy blue windbreaker, came into the room. She held a .32 caliber revolver, casually, in her gloved hand. She was wearing a perfume that gave off the scent of sandalwood.

  “Oy, what a bellicose family,” observed Groucho. “There ought to be a suitable pun to go with ‘bellicose,’ but my powers of invention seem to have fled.”

  “You assholes,” accused Alicia, coming farther into the big office. “If you hadn’t dug up Doug’s body, we wouldn’t have to get rid of you now. That was stupid.”

  “We were curious,” said Groucho, “to find out why Spellman was blackmailing you, dear lady.”

  Jack said, “He happened to be here the night Alicia lost her temper.”

  “Lost her temper is a polite way of putting it,” I said. “She shot the guy dead.”

  “He was going to walk out on me,” explained Alicia. “Naturally I got angry. I don’t like being dumped.”

  “Or being blackmailed,” I said.

  “Spellman was a bastard, with no loyalty whatsoever,” said Jack. “Here he was portraying Ty-Gor, and yet he had the nerve to—”

  “We don’t think he tried to blackmail your sister,” said Groucho, “until your father began to pressure Warlock to fire him.”

  “Randy was fooling around with my stupid stepmother,” said Alicia. “It was so obvious that even Dad noticed it.”

  “Spellman wanted us to guarantee him the part, or he’d send some pictures he’d taken to the police,” added her brother.

  Alicia said, “But we couldn’t put pressure on Dad without having to tell him what Randy was blackmailing us about.”

  “This saga of family woes brings tears to my eyes, kids,” said Groucho. “But let us pause for a moment while I reiterate that doing away with us won’t be as easy as removing Doug Cahan was.”