Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 6 (1927-12).djvu/109

 but would give no particulars of himself. The one point of doubt in this case was the fact that the arrested man had a scar on his chest, whereas no such mark was mentioned in the description of the deceased Malheur.

With these circumstances in mind, it is not surprizing that Marian Turner screamed when she caught sight of her dead first husband, whom she had married when she was but eighteen, and whose doglike devotion she had found irritating rather than otherwise, and whom she had done her best to forget since she had been married to her wonderful James Turner.

The instant she screamed, however, she realized that the position contained embarrassments, so when the passers-by crowded around her she apologized.

"It's all right," she explained, "I'm sorry to be so silly, but I was sure that car was going to run over that little child." And she pointed to the scene of a fictitious narrow escape.

That evening she told her husband of the apparition, and together they consulted Dr. Delware as to possible pre-natal effects of such a shock on a child-to-be. He reassured them, but they were still a little troubled as to the legal status of children if dead first husbands were going to make a practise of returning to life.

at the same time that the authorities, in further investigation of the Malheur affair, decided to exhume the murdered man's body. The grave was opened. It contained an empty coffin. Malheur was missing.

This made it look as though Marzot had been executed under false pretenses, though it was admittedly rather late to make amends.

Even after this, the arrested "vagrant" still denied that he was the dead man, and he was released after a short detention. Thereupon he vanished.

Following this exhumation, the undertaking firm of Interments, Inc., which had carried out the last rites on the murdered man, was interviewed by Detective Bowler, who had charge of the case. Mr. Marlow, who seemed to be the whole firm, could offer no explanation. But it so chanced that this Mr. Marlow was unpopular among the undertaking fraternity. A short while previously he had been struggling along, small, suburban, and almost bankrupt. Then without apparent reason he had burst forth in a blaze of advertisements as Interments, Inc., and had taken a large establishment in the heart of New York. It was then that he became unpopular. He gave cut-rates for funerals, and a facetious competitor even remarked that he would next be introducing a cash-and-carry system to the profession.

This unpopularity led to gossip and it was then noticed that quite a number of the alleged apparitions were of people who had been inanimate patrons of Interments, Inc. That fact, combined with Mallieur's empty coffin, furthered the police investigation, and eventually established the fact that not merely several, but every one of the apparitions had been buried by Interments, Inc.

Among other people interviewed by Detective Bowler during these inquiries was Marian Turner, not because there was any suspicion that she had seen her dead husband, but because his funeral had left the mortuary chapel of Interments, Inc., instead of his late residence.

Mrs. Turner stated that she had actually desired the cortege to leave the house, but that Mr. Marlow had been so insistent that in the end she