Black Mask January 1949 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Black Mask Magazine
Published: 1949-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

Legitimately Dead

G. T. Fleming-Roberts

Fells was only a third-rate booking agent, but still he had the angle to make good a forgery, disentangle a bigamist—and awaken two corpses.

He was hanging by the neck from a noose attached to a rafter.

Chapter 1

FELLS hoped the somebody in the hall would get tired and go-away. When the knocking at the door grew louder and more persistent, he sighed, sat up in bed, and turned on the lamp. His alarm clock said 3:20 A. M. And Fells said, “For cripesake,” or something like that.

“It’s me, Mr. Fells—Mrs. Sandorf,” his landlady called from the hall, loud enough so that her other roomers wouldn’t get the idea there was anything clandestine going on between herself and Mr. Fells.

Fells kicked off the sheet. He said, “Just a minute, darling,” also loud; his fellow tenants could think any damned thing that amused them. When you’ve spent the earliest months of your life in the top of a vaudeville trouper’s trunk, you like people to be amused.

Fells toed small feet into slippers, stumbled to the closet for a dressing gown of maroon rayon satin which he put on. Habitually careful of his appearance, he made sure that the collar was smoothly turned and the sash tied a little to the right of center before he went to the door.

Mrs. Sandorf, her gray hair in short stiff pigtails, clutched the front of an Indian blanket robe that no self-respecting Navajo would have been caught dead in.

“One of your artists,” she said, her irony no doubt inspired by the legend “Artists Management” on Fells’ business card. “Down in my parlor. That old mesmerizing man, what’s he call himself—Sir Cedric, ain’t it? I seen him yesterday in the window of that furniture store on College Avenue.” Mrs. Sandorf jeopardized her modesty to make passes in front of Fells’ small face in imitation of Sir Cedric Jones, billed as the Master Hypnotist. “Sleep, sleep, sleep!”

“I’d like to,” Fells said.

“Well, doesn’t he ever?” Mrs. Sandorf rattled on, her jowls trembling with indignation. “Doesn’t he know it’s after three in the morn—he probably doesn’t. If he had a watch, it would be in hock. Him poundin’ on the door like to wake the dead!”

Fells pointed to the closet where he and Mrs. Sandorf—certainly Mrs. Sandorf—knew there was a bottle of rye whiskey. “Have yourself a snifter for your trouble,” he suggested as he stepped into the hall. “But don’t bother to fill the bottle with water this time. That stuff is getting pretty weak.”

When Fells appeared between the sliding doors of Mrs. Sandorf’s parlor, the thin old man with the black dyed hair and sunken eyes to match stood up and put his hat on as though right now they were going somewhere. Whatever it was he started to say had to give way to the priority of his dry, racking cough. He went for his handkerchief.

“Take it easy, Jonesy,” Fells said.

Faint spots of color appeared beneath Sir Cedric’s high cheek bones. Fells thought there were

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