The band was playing “California Here I Come” and the depot was a noisy spectacle of cheering humans and gay bunting. Officials and dignitaries were present in droves. Flood lights flashed over the spectacular scene, picking out faces of famous stars and directors.
It was Hollywood at its colorful, sensational best.
“Stormy” Potterson was on the bunting-bedecked improvised stage finishing the speech of introduction.
“...and so,” he boomed, “we feel that tonight we are welcoming to our midst one who will speedily fulfill all of the glorious expectations we have for her. In my opinion this girl of beauty and charm and talent will take her place in stardom’s uppermost niche. That is why it gives me such great pleasure to give to you, her very first audience, Colossal’s future Star of Stars!”
A spotlight stabbed at the platform revealing in its bright glare a heavily-veiled figure. Applause broke out from all sides of the depot. It swelled up, higher and higher, then at a signal from Potterson it faded away to a tense expectant murmur.
With lumbering grace Potterson escorted the heavily draped figure to the edge of the stage, and with a solemnly dramatic gesture drew aside the veil and cast it to the floor.
And in the garish light of the stabbing beacon, Hollywood had its first introduction to the sallow face and streaky hair of Mazie Slatter!
A blanket of incredulous silence settled over the crowd.
And then as Mazie shook her hands over her head like a conquering fighter the storm broke.
Roaring, rocking waves of laughter surged up from the crowd completely drowning out Potterson’s enraged bellow. It grew louder and more unrestrained by the second. Men clung to each other helplessly and some of them rolled to the floor, doubled up with merriment. It was a bedlam of buffoonery, an earthquake of mirth.
Off to one side of the howling, giggling crowd there was a lone, sad figure. Howie Lemp was not laughing.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time to substitute Mazie for the exotic Leanhaun Shee, but things were not working quite as he had hoped. In fact things were terrible. And, he decided as he saw Potterson’s huge figure lumbering toward him, they were destined to get much worse!
“I’ll throw you in jail,” Potterson was screaming. “I’ll have you tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, and flung to the buzzards. No man alive can do what you’ve done to me. Made me the laughing stock of the whole industry. Where is the girl? Where is she? If you don’t produce Mazie Slatter, I’ll have you hung for kidnaping.”
“Mazie Slatter?” Howie echoed blankly. “That’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Potterson was trembling like a tub of grape jelly in his rage. He whipped out papers from his inside pocket, jabbed a thick finger at the name signed to them. “It says right there in your handwriting. Mazie Slatter!”
Howie saw that Potterson was right and he realized at the same time what had happened. When he had signed the contract he had been thinking solely of Mazie and instinctively he had written her name into the document.
“And these contracts are air tight,” Potterson bellowed over the noisy roars of the crowd.
“If you’re trying to pull something, you’re out of luck. You can’t get out of these contracts.”
Howie had been thinking swiftly and surely. His spine was stiffening again. Marc Antony was coming to the surface.
Suddenly he jabbed a bony finger into Potterson fat chest.
“You mean you can’t get out of it,” he snapped. “That girl on the platform is Mazie Slatter and you’ve signed her up for seven years. There’s nothing about physical descriptions in that contract. If you want to go to court, we will prove that Mazie Slatter has been Mazie Slatter for the past twenty-eight years and that you signed her as such.”
“It’s a trick,” Potterson howled, “a gyp. I won’t stand for it. I want the girl, the dark-haired beautiful girl I saw in the drug store. Where is she? I don’t want Mazie Slatter, if that’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”
He stared frantically over the crowd, listening to their wild hysterical laughter. He turned back to Howie shuddering.
“You hear that?” he demanded shrilly. “I’m ruined. I’ll be the biggest joke in pictures.”
“No you won’t!” Howie barked. He grabbed Potterson by both arms, jerked him around. “Listen to me. Forget about the other girl, you’ll never see her again. You’ve got something better than just a good looker.” He swung Potterson around to face the screaming, hilarious mob. “You’ve got a comedienne!” he shouted. “Look at that crowd. They love her. They’re laughing themselves sick at her, but they’re enjoying themselves like kids at a circus.”
“What about my publicity campaign?” Potterson moaned. “I’ve built this girl up as the most beautiful creature in the world. I can’t get out of that. I’m through, ruined.”
“No,” Howie said firmly, “you’re not.”
He took a deep breath. A man with will power enough to play in the same league with Marc Antony can rise to occasions.
“Let me handle things,” he said with quiet authority.
He did. With what was called a brilliant stroke of genius, he transformed Mazie Slatter into one of the greatest natural comediennes the screen has ever produced. And that was the start of Howie’s meteoric rise to the head of Colossal Films.
Now he’s happily married to Mazie. But he gets almost as much happiness from his hobby, which is collecting busts of Marc Antony. He has sixteen of them now in his office.
Double in Death
First published in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942.
The resident head of the New York State Insane asylum glanced from the release papers on his desk to the tall, middle-aged, intelligent looking man standing before him.
“Yours has been a most interesting case, Colegrave,” he said thoughtfully. “Six months ago I would have staked my professional reputation on the fact that you were an incurable inmate.
“Now,” the gray-haired alienist shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, “I find myself in the position of signing your release papers and offering you my congratulations on your extremely remarkable recovery.”
The tall, distinguished man facing the alienist bowed slightly, and smiled.
“Thank you doctor,” he said quietly. “You’ve done a great deal for me I know. Now that I am ready again to take my place in a normal world I find myself somewhat apprehensive. Are you quite sure that I am completely cured?”
The alienist stood up, chuckling.
“The fact that you can ask a question like that is the best indication that you are cured. I can say now, Colegrave, that when you first came into this sanitarium, you were the most advanced schizophrenic[3] I have ever observed. Your cleavage in personality and ego was almost absolute. Mentally, you were two persons. Each segment of your psyche was complete and whole as far as will, memory and temperament were concerned. As a rule when a person is a victim of schizophrenia the eventual result is terrible insanity. The two natures, the two persons you might almost say, are constantly warring for supremacy, and the outcome of such mental civil war is usually mental anarchy. By some miracle you escaped that fate.”
“I find it hard to believe,” Colegrave murmured. “I can remember what it was like when I was possessed of two distinct personalities. I can remember the terrible struggles that I underwent when my dual nature was fighting itself. Until three months ago my life was a living hell. Then, as you know, after my sickness, everything was different. I was a well man again and, somehow, my mental sickness was cured too.”
3
Schizophrenia — A mental disease resulting from a split personality. The victim has two natures, generally diametrically opposed to each other.