A Graveyard for Lunatics

this??

He transferred his cane to his left hand while his right hand trembled up to feel the chiseled name above the Grecian tomb door.

His fingers shook over the ?A? and froze on the final ?T.?

?I know this name.? Henry spun a Rolodex behind his white billiard-ball eyes. ?Would that be the great, long-gone proprietor of the studio across the wall??

?Yes.?

?The loud man who sat in all the boardrooms and no room left? Fixed his own bottles, changed his own diapers, bought the sandbox, two and one half, fired the kindergarten teacher age three, sent ten boys to the nurse, age seven, chased girls at eight, caught ?em at nine, owned a parking lot at ten, and the studio on his twelfth birthday when his pa died and left him London, Rome, and Bombay? That the one??

?Henry,? I sighed, ?you?re marvelous.?

?Makes me hard to live with,? admitted Henry, quietly. ?Well.?

He reached up to touch the name again and the date underneath.

?October 31st, 1934. Halloween! Twenty years gone. I wonder how it feels, being dead that long. Hell. Let?s ask! Anyone think to bring some tools??

?A crowbar from the car,? said Crumley.

?Good?? Henry put out his hand. ?But for the helluvit?? His fingers touched the tomb door.

?Holy Moses!? he exclaimed.

The door drifted open on oiled hinges. Not rusted! Not squealing! Oiled!

?Sweet Jesus! Open house!? Henry stood quickly back. ?You don?t mind, since you got the faculties?you first.?

I touched the door. It glided further into shadow.

?Here.?

Crumley brushed past, switched on his flashlight, and stepped into midnight.

I followed.

?Don?t leave me out here,? said Henry.

Crumley pointed, ?Shut the door. We don?t want anyone seeing our flash??

I hesitated. I had seen too many films where the vault doors slammed and people were trapped, yelling, forever. And if the Beast was out there now??

?Christ! Here!? Crumley shoved the door, leaving the merest quarter-inch crack for air. ?Now.? He turned.

The room was empty, except for a large stone sarcophagus at its center. There was no lid. Inside the sarcophagus there should have been a coffin.

?Hell!? said Crumley.

We looked down. There was no coffin.

?Don?t tell!? said Henry. ?Lemme put on my dark glasses helps me smell better! There!?

And while we stared down, Henry bent, took a deep breath, thought about it behind his dark glasses, let it out, shook his head, and snuffed another draught. Then he beamed.

?Shucks. Ain?t nothin? there! Right??

?Right.?

?J. C. Arbuthnot,? murmured Crumley, ?where are you??

?Not here,? I said.

?And never was,? added Henry.

We glanced at him quickly. He nodded, mightily self-pleased.

?Nobody by that name or any other name, any time, ever here at all. If there had been, I?d get the scent, see? But not so much as one flake of dandruff, one toenail, one hair from one nostril. Not even a sniff of tuberose or incense. This place, friends, was never used by a dead person, not for an hour. If I?m wrong, cut my nose off!?

Ice water poured down my spine and out my shoes.

?Christ,? muttered Crumley, ?why would they build a tomb-house, put no one in, but pretend they did??

?Maybe there never was a body,? said Henry. ?What if Arbuthnot never died??

?No, no,? I said. ?The newspapers all over the world, the five thousand mourners. I was there. I saw the funeral car.?

?What did they do with the body then?? Crumley said. ?And why??

?I?The tombhouse door slammed shut!

Henry, Crumley, and I shouted with the shock. I grabbed Henry, Crumley grabbed us both. The flashlight fell. Cursing, we bent and knocked heads, sucked breaths, waited to hear the door locked on us. We blundered,