I had shut my eyes, not wanting to feel the rain again on my face. I opened them.
“Well?” said Roy.
The body was there, lying on its back, its eyes wide, its nostrils flared, and its mouth gaped. But no rain fell to brim over and pour down its cheeks and chin.
“Arbuthnot,” I said.
“Yeah,” gasped Roy. “I remember the photos now. Lord, it’s a good resemblance. But why would anyone put this, whatever it is, up a ladder, for what?”
I heard a door slam. A hundred yards off, in the warm dust, Manny Leiber had got out of his Rolls, and was blinking into the shade, around, about, above us.
I flinched.
“Wait a minute—” Roy said. He snorted and reached down.
“Don’t!”
“Hold on,” he said, and touched the body.
“For God’s sake, quick!”
“Why looky here,” said Roy.
He took hold of the body and lifted.
“Gah!” I said, and stopped.
For the body rose up as easily as a bag of cornflakes.
“No!”
“Yeah, sure.” Roy shook the body. It rattled like a scarecrow.
“I’ll be damned! And look, at the bottom of the coffin, lead sinkers to give it weight once they got it up the ladder! And when it fell, like you said, it would really hit. Look out! Here come the barracudas!”
Roy squinted out into the noon glare and the distant figures stepping out of cars, gathering around Manny.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Roy dropped the body, slammed the lid and ran.
I followed in and out of a maze of furniture, pillars, and false fronts.
Off at a distance, through three dozen doors and half up a flight of Renaissance stairs, Roy and I stopped, looked back, craned to ache and listen. Way off, about ninety to a hundred feet, Manny Leiber arrived at the place where we had been only a minute ago. Manny’s voice cut through all the rest. He told everyone, I imagine, to shut up. There was silence. They were opening the coffin with the facsimile body in it.
Roy looked at me, eyebrows up. I looked back, unable to breathe.
There was a stir, some sort of outcry, curses. Manny swore above the rest. Then there was a babble, more talk, Manny yelling again, and a final slam of the coffin lid.
That was the gunshot that plummeted me and Roy the hell out of the place. We made it down the stairs as quietly as possible, ran through another dozen doors, and out the back side of the carpenters’ shop.
“You hear anything?” gasped Roy, glancing back.
“No. You?”
“Not a damn thing. But they sure exploded. Not once but three times. Manny, the worst! My God, what’s going on? Why all the fuss over a damned wax dummy I could have run up with two bucks’ worth of latex, wax, and plaster in half an hour!?”
“Slow down, Roy,” I said. “We don’t want anyone to see us running.”