Adventures of a Professional Corpse by H. Bedford-Jones

Author:H. Bedford-Jones [Bedford-Jones, H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Fiction Hunter Press
Published: 2014-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

THE SCREEN’S NEWEST RECRUIT

Beautiful Viola Dane, Acclaimed By Critics

As Having The Most Beautiful Figure

in Hollywood

“How’s that?” exclaimed Roesche. “Am I right, eh? Am I right?”

“No,” I said. “You’re wrong, and you were always wrong about her. She just weakened, that’s all.”

Which was probably the case. Some of these days I’ll ring her up and ask her.

3.

The Wife of the Humorous Gangster

THE ability to counterfeit death—

Yes, many’s the handsome corpse I’ve made, but never under my real name. James F. Bronson is inscribed on no tombstone. Once I learned how to earn legitimate money, and big money, I went seriously to work at it. My physical abnormality, combined with the proper drugs, helped practice make perfect.

The element of chance, of adventure, of risk, so fascinated me that I would have traded professions with no one. And it is safe to say that no one would have traded professions with me. It is surprising how many people can make use of a dead man, however! This odd profession of mine had only one real drawback. I had to trust someone to bring me back to life after I was “dead.”

For this little item, I very naturally needed a medico, and it was the curious adventure of the humorous gangster which provided me with a real find in this way. It was always a task to locate the right person. Although I was mixed up with nothing crooked I could not employ any doctor imbued with high faluting notions of professional ethics; such a man was too risky an equation.

Coming to a mid-western city I followed my usual procedure of inserting a blind advertisement in newspapers, and then scouting around for the right man to work with me. In this instance I found him in the person of one Dr. Roesche, a young fellow of German extraction.

Roesche had brains, he was conscientious, and he was hard up. I liked him from the start, because he refused point-blank to touch anything shady, and when he heard of my business he turned me down cold. He would only change his mind when I had convinced him that I was considering nothing of an illegal character, and wanted nothing from him that would conflict with professional ethics.

“I need you to administer a hypodermic; no more,” I told him, and then frankly set my case before him, showing that my heart was on the right side instead of the left. “It has a very slow beat, too. More correctly, no beat at all. It flutters rather than beats, so there’s no pulse to mention. They tell me it’s nothing very rare.”

“Auricular Fibrilation,” and he nodded. “And a barrel chest, I see. The heart isn’t against the ribs—why, the stethoscope doesn’t bring it up a bit!”

From a professional standpoint, he was keenly interested. Also, we got on well together. Once he consented to work with me, he was full of ideas. Instead of the chance drug I used to put me to sleep, he suggested an improvement on it.

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