“I'm sorry, Drumhead,” Jack Cass apologized. “You've arrested me before and I've never resisted. You can arrest me right now and I won't resist. It was just an automatic reflex when you came all over me like that. I sure didn't mean to sling you off that hard. Are you hurt?”
“Yes, a little bit. And now I can name the thing you resemble J. Palmer Cass in. It's the bull neck, and bull necks are hard to disguise.”
“There's lots of bulls necks, Drumhead. I wrestled on the Tank Town circuits for three years when I was a much younger slob than I am now. If a man had a buller neck then mine, then he whipped me. But I won a hundred and nine bouts and I lost only twenty-two. Drumhead, I don't know where you get your wild ideas, but all my properties are wide open for total inspection by you or any of the authorities. And my own person and history and antecedents and investments and dealings are also open to every sort of scrutiny. My fingerprints are on the ends of my fingers and my blood type is in the blood in my veins. Why do you look at me like that, Drumhead?”
“The impossibilities, Jack, the impossibilities! There's a dozen things that can't be made to fit into the puzzle. But I have a counter for that bull neck of yours, and that bull toss. It's my service revolver loaded and in my hand now.”
“Drumhead, Drumhead, you won't need that with me. Or keep me covered with it if it makes you feel more comfortable.”
“It does, and I will. Now start giving me more information. Quick! Your life depends on it.”
“Be careful, Drumhead. Your own life may be hanging by a thin thread. I worry about you more than I worry about myself. I surely don't want you to be killed.”
“Neither do I. But I swore today that I'd kill that hypnotic snake J. Palmer Cass. And I will, unless he kills me first. Take me to him, Jack, if you know where he is. Whose side would you be on in the show-down, Jack?”
“Oh, yours, Drumhead. You're a good man. J. Palmer is a devil.”
“Then you do know him. Why are you taking off your glasses?”
Jack Cass had slumped down into one of the chairs again and taken off his glasses and buried his face in his hands. And at that moment, the dog Junkyard gave the most mournful howl imaginable.
“Yes, I know J. Palmer in a way, Drumhead. In a way, in a horrible way. I'm taking off my glasses to wipe my eyes. I'm wiping my eyes because I'm crying. And I'm crying because I'm a slob, and because I have a clear vision of you dead, shot to death by your own hand and by your own service revolver.”
“Where, Jack? And when?”
“Within ten minutes. And within a hundred yards. Don't push it, Drumhead. Don't let it happen.”
“What is your real first name, Jack?”
“Don't insist on knowing, Drumhead. Your life is hanging by such a thin thread.”
“Yes, I do insist on knowing. What is your full name, Jack?”
“May this cup pass from me! My name is John Palmerworm Cass.”
“Palmerworm, did you say? What kind of a name and what kind of a worm is that?”
“The palmerworm is in the Bible. And also it is the canker worm inside of me. It's been eating from inside for all of my life. My father, when I was in my cradle (yes, we had an old-fashioned cradle in the old-fashioned farm house where I was born), said that, in my ‘other appearance’, I gave him a look of such sheer hatred that he staggered. I was just one day old then, but he said that I comprehended everything. So he had me named John Palmerworm Cass, for he said that the palmerworm was the name of the devil inside me, the devil that was sometimes my other appearance. And he thought it better that it be called by its proper name. Drumhead Joe, withdraw from it all right now. Walk out the front door of my pawn shop right now, and do nothing, nothing, nothing more on this case. I will make you a promise. I promise that in exactly one hour from now J. Palmer Cass will appear in his own town house (‘all the doors and windows being closed’, as the Bible phrase has it), and that he will shoot himself dead in the presence of all the authorities and guards there. Do it, Drumhead. I really can deliver on it. I had already decided that J. Palmer Cass would die today. He will die, and you will live. Make the deal, Drumhead!”
“No. I'll make no deal. I'm too close to solving this mystery.”
“You are too close to your own death, Drumhead. Did you know that I was a sleepwalker when I was a boy?”
“No, of course I didn't know it! What is this gibberish? Stop that sniffling! Look at me, Jack. I want to see your eyes!”
“No, Drumhead, no! My father often told me when I was a boy that I had the other appearance when I sleepwalked. He said that he would beat it out of me or kill me trying. But he didn't. It killed him instead.”
“What killed him instead?”
“My other appearance. It killed him. And it killed others. I don't want it to kill you. Make the deal, and it will kill itself. I swear it, I swear it, I swear it!”
“Stop gibbering! Look up! I want to see your eyes, Jack.”
“Oh God, no!”
“Oh God, yes!”
“Ah, very well,” spoke a voice that was not at all the voice of Jack Cass. It was rather the elegant and often insulting voice of J. Palmer Cass, the super-swindler and hunted criminal. “Look into my eyes then, Police person. Look into them to your death and destruction.” And the bull-necked person raised his head.
2
Confusion in the corkscrew way,
And which of us will die today?
“Oh God over my head!” Drumhead Joe Cress cried out, and he began to tremble in every member of him. “It's the snake! It's the elegant snake! And I'm the wretched ground-bird. He'll eat me alive.” Drumhead Joe shook so hard that the service revolver in his hand was a blur.
“Shoot us, Drumhead,” came the old voice of Jack Cass out of the somewhat altered mouth. “Whichever one of us you kill it will be a gain.”
“Shut up, Jack!” came the elegant voice of J. Palmer Cass out of the same somewhat altered mouth. “Drumhead Joe is not going to shoot anybody but Drumhead Joe. Back up, Drumhead, and up those three steps and through that door. You've been through that door before on your searches, but you didn't find the other door beyond.”
“I will shoot, I will shoot,” Drumhead Joe jittered. “I have the gun.”
“But you are the hypnotized ground bird, Drumhead, and I am the snake,” came the voice of J. Palmer Cass. “The ground bird never finds courage enough to shoot the snake. It just doesn't work that way. Why am I blue-eyed now, you wonder? Oh, it is only the contact lenses. It takes big ones though to blot out the big friendly brown eyes of Jack. I always take off his old hornrims with regret. That slight crack in the corner of the glass, that sloppy winding of small copper wire to hold the frame together. Who wouldn't trust a slob wearing such homely glasses? Who wouldn't trust him to be a slob forever? Those touches were sheer art. And t'was myself, not Jack, who thought of it. And then I set the partial bridge into my mouth and so took away the homely gap-toothed grin. That had been another masterpiece. Yes, there is a door there, Drumhead. Just push on the wall. See, it opens. Back through it. Back up as I tell you to do, and do not take your eyes off me. The light is dim, but you'll become accustomed to it. Tell the dog Junkyard to go back, Jack. He might get in the way.”
But then the strained voice of Jack Cass spoke just the opposite: “Stay with us all the way, Junkyard. I want you along in the showdown.”
“Yes, here's the little bundle by which one man changes into another in the same body,” it was J. Palmer Cass speaking out of the common mouth again. “The hairpiece, blond and wavy and so overly contrived as to seem and be artificial. Where is bald-headed Jack now? He crawls deeper and deeper within.”
The strange changing creature stopped and stripped naked in that tunnel that ran from the back of the Imperial Pawn Palace on Polder Street upwards through the clammy earth to the higher level townhouse on High Street. Then the creature put on a sort of corset and clamped it tightly onto itself, so it would appear thirty pounds l
ighter, and the slob was driven still deeper into the flesh. The strange changing creature put on the elegant clothes then, and he was J. Palmer Cass without a doubt, Master Embezzler and Swindler and con-man and criminal, reckless murderer and master of the hypnotic aura as well as of the disappearing act.
“Shoot us, Drumhead!” the somewhat smothered voice of Jack Cass was heard. “Since J. Palmer is in the ascendant, I believe he is the one you will kill. You will kill him if you shoot us, yes, and you may or may not kill me. That part will not matter. Shoot us and save yourself.”
“Shut up, Jack!” ordered the elegant voice of J. Palmer Cass. “Drumhead Joe is not going to shoot anyone except himself, Drumhead Joe. There were so many things involved, Joe. I myself write with a beautiful florid right hand that has all the perfection of a steel engraving. I have such a signature as every other confidence man in the world envies. And poor submerged Jack can only write with his upside-down left-handed jackass signature, and that is his legal hand. Our talents are all in opposite directions, but we are both good money makers. Any questions before we come to the chosen site where you will kill yourself with your own service revolver?”
“Wh-wh-where is the million d-d-dollars?”
“Oh, it's in the nail keg on the top of which you played chess with Jack. It's under a six-inch thick cover of rusty six-penny nails in the keg. You were right that it was very near, and that it gave off its own aura which you could sense.”
“Shoot us, Drumhead!” the muffled jackass voice of Jack Cass begged.
“Be quiet, Jack,” J. Palmer Cass ordered. To Drumhead Joe Cress it was incomparably weird to hear the two persons arguing out of the same mouth. “I love a good game myself, and Drumhead Joe will be given the chance to make a good game of it. We come up now through the third cellar of my town house. Every town house should have at least three cellars, one of them well hidden. We pause here, and each of us three will drink a bottle of wine for the occasion. Since Jack is a slob he will drink common port here, for he would appreciate nothing better. But you and I, Drumhead, myself a man of total culture, and you a person of at least a touch of it, we will each drink a bottle of Chateau Serpent Blond 1907. And while we drink, I will instruct you on what you may or may not say and do in what will probably be the final scene of your life. I open the three bottles with a corkscrew or tire-bouchon. And after we have drunk the wine we will ascend by what is also called a tire-bouchon or corkscrew stairway. It takes us to the wall of the room from which I disappeared two hours and a quarter ago.”
John Palmer Cass poured a goblet full from his own bottle with his right hand. Drumhead Joe Kress poured a goblet full from his own bottle with his left hand, still holding his service revolver in his trembling right hand. And then the left hand of the ambiguous creature, using a motion that more belonged to the slob Jack Cass than to the elegant J. Palmer Cass, poured a goblet full from his own bottle of common port, and he raised the goblet in the common left hand.
“I first,” said J. Palmer Cass, and he took a deep drink from his goblet with his shaped connoisseur's mouth. “You second, Drumhead,” J. Palmer said, and Drumhead Joe Kress drank with trembling hand and mouth. “It may give you the spirit to make a real game of it, Drumhead,” J. Palmer Cass said. “You third, Jack.” And with a homely motion, Jack Cass tipped his goblet into the now unshaped mouth of the common creature and drank his common port.
“When we come to the well-disguised door at the top of the corkscrew stairway, I will create a disturbance (no matter how) so that the several police persons still in that room will all start and gape in the other direction. Then we will push you into the room (Junkyard, stay out from under foot or I'll kick your damn head off!), I myself and the submerged Jack within me. And we'll stand in that little open doorway then, Drumhead. You will be able to see us, me, clearly; but the police in the room will not be able to see us. I have a trick that I use in such cases. Now listen closely, Drumhead: here is the little speech which you will or will not give. What you may say is ‘Oh my friends and associates, I have a mortal confession that I must make. You have not been able to find the elegant criminal J. Palmer Cass because I myself have been playing the role of the criminal J. Palmer Cass all these years, at the same time that I have been playing the role of Drumhead Joe Kress the famous investigator. It doesn't really matter how I played both of the roles. It is a secret that I will take to the grave with me. Now I will kill myself to make amends for the evil I've done.’ So you may say and do it, Drumhead. It is by far the ‘best show’ of your options. And when you do that, then I, along with the submerged Jack Cass, will quietly close the door and go down the corkscrew stairway to further adventures.
“Or you will shoot me dead. Or you will shoot Jack dead. Those are your other two options. But you will not kill us both. The survivor will have received only a superficial wound, and he'll have the body. And he will be forever free from his ‘other appearance’. And you, Drumhead, will be alive and well, though in a rather silly situation with all that gun-waving and gun-shooting and all that crazy man talk. It is your choice, Drumhead Joe. But please tremble a little less and try to make a game of it. Do you remember the words you are to say or not say?”
“Yes, I remember the words,” jittered the trembling Drumhead Joe Kress, his service revolver a mere blur in his vibrating hand.
“We are at the top of the corkscrew stairway. We are at the well-disguised door,” J. Palmer Cass said. “Dammit Junkyard, keep from under foot! Be ready, Drumhead, this is your big moment.”
In the room on the other side of the wall, a disturbance was created (no matter how). Then the ambiguous common Cass creature opened the disguised door and pushed the trembling Drumhead Joe Kress into the room. There was a short life-and-death pause. And then—
“Oh my friends and associates, I have a mortal confession that I must make—” Drumhead Joe Kress began in a loud but horribly trembling and contorted voice. “You have not been able to find the elegant criminal J. Palmer Cass because—”
3
The dusty leaves move in the breeze.
They are the leaves of money trees.
The sun is rusty overhead.
And one, at least, of us is dead.
A bowl of wine to lap at ease.
A game. And junkyard thoughts like these.
A dog and a man were playing chess and drinking wine. The dog was drinking common port, and the man was drinking Chateau Serpent Blond 1907. The man had opened the game with the Brodsky gambit, and the dog had been eating away at the man's elegant game with junkyard moves. They were sitting in two Queen Anne chairs with the chessboard on the top of a nail keg between them. The million dollars was still in the nail keg. Ah, but it was covered with a six-inch thick cover of rusty six-penny nails.
“I do a lot of sleepwalking lately, Drumhead,” said the dog Junkyard. Its voice was somewhere between that of an old country dog and that of the man Jack Cass who was perhaps dead.
“Sometimes I sleepwalk by day, but mostly by night. And when I sleepwalk I frequently have an ‘other appearance’. My own ‘other appearance’ is that of the man Jack Cass who is dead, but not, I hope, irrevocably dead. A legend has grown up in this neighborhood that the ghost of the pawnbroker and junkyard operator walks at night. But it is only my ‘other appearance’ that the people have been seeing.”
“A legend has also grown up, Junkyard, about a ghost dog that walks at night, a luminescent ghost dog. Is that you?”
“Yes. J. Palmer Cass had a substance that he used on his hairpiece; and I have found it and use it on my entire body hair. It makes the hair luminescent, and it was an element in the hypnotic aura of J. Palmer Cass, as it is becoming an element in my own aura. I am the luminescent dog, but I may or may not be a ghost dog. I have hallucinations; and it is at least an even chance that you are one of my hallucinations. What are the chances that I am one of yours?”
“That also is about an even chance, Junkyard. I often wonder how i
t would have been if, at that critical moment in the doorway of the room at the top of the corkscrew stairway, you hadn't bitten the Cass creature so viciously on the leg as to make it cry out and enter into the awareness of the police and other authorities who were there. And how it would have been if you hadn't bitten me in the leg so viciously that I shot off my service revolver accidentally and apparently killed Jack Cass in the common body and left J. Palmer Cass alive. I often wonder how it would have been if you hadn't done that. Yes, and I often wonder how it really is now.”
“And I often wonder how it would have been if the bleeding and furious J. Palmer Cass hadn't kicked me to death just before they subdued him,” the dog Junkyard said. “I wonder how it would have been in that case. Yes, and I also wonder how it really is now.”
“I had either a dream or an hallucination that you came to see me in Bedlam three days ago, Junkyard,” Drumhead Joe Kress said.
“I did go to see you there, Drumhead, and we had a visit,” Junkyard explained. “But I'm afraid to go there again. Did you know that there's a department at the Bethlehem Institute for the Mentally Disturbed for Insane and Alienated Dogs? There is. All the canine inmates there are well-treated, for they all have rich owners. There is no viva-experimentation done on them, not at Holy Bedlam. It's done on the stray dogs, on the junkyard dogs that they pick up. It's all in a good cause, but I am the prototypical junkyard dog.”
“J. Palmer Cass has been sentenced to hang for several murders, Drumhead Joe. Are you glad?”
“Not entirely. I wanted to kill him myself. But that would probably overly disturb my soul. I reached a certain peace now, with the therapy at Bedlam. They say that they may release me in a week or two, if I at least pretend to respect the boundaries and limens between reality and unreality. But it strikes me that sane men have never done a very good job at defining those boundaries and limens. In my present state, I may have a more accurate apperception than have sane persons of just how flexible those boundaries and limens are. They humor me though, and one of them walks with me down here every afternoon (for it's only a ten minute walk) and lets me spend a half-hour every day with my ‘invisible dog’ as they call you, in the old empty and deserted pawn shop. Why do they call you the ‘invisible dog’?”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 310
