O'Rourke drew in his breath sharply. "I can't understand it," he muttered. "He's been dead nearly a month, but he—he still looks spruced up!"
Marvin Cummings shifted his spade and spat down into the empty grave. "Pull yourself together, Terry," he gibed. "He's been shot full of arsenic. You ought to know that a well-preserved corpse can take it."
Harsh laughter came from both sides of him. O'Rourke's three companions were trying hard to be hard. Tall, blue-eyed M. T. (Empty) Cummings, his straw-colored hair blowing in the night wind. Little John Slater, his shoulders hunched and his hands thrust deep into his pockets—to hide their trembling. Lanky, freckled-faced Clarence Limerick, looking even younger than his nineteen years.
Only O'Rourke wasn't pretending. "All right," he muttered. "Laugh your heads off. Digging that poor old fellow up and robbing him of the peace he's entitled to isn't my idea of a joke."
"The joke won't be on him," said Cummings, ghoulishly. "His sense of humor has atrophied—along with his heart, lungs and liver."
"That's right," said little Slater. "The joke will be on Freddy. He'll hit the ceiling when he sees a corpse in his bed."
"It's a mean, malicious trick," said O'Rourke. "I'm ashamed of myself. We’re grave robbers. We're worse than—"
"Aw, stow it, Terry," rapped Limerick. "You weren't so thin-skinned this morning. You agreed with us that Freddy needed hardening. He's so damned nervous and excitable that a dead fly on his undershirt would scare the pants off him."
"Yeah, something has got to be done about Freddy," agreed Cummings. "If he wants to be a sawbones he'll have to stop yelling for his mama every time he sees a calvaria chisseled off, and a nice, juicy brain exposed. It's a wonder Nancy has any respect for him."
"That's what gets me down," grunted Limerick. "He faints in the dissecting room and what happens? She goes out with him on a date. With nail-hard material to choose from why did she have to go soft on a weak-kneed Freshman squirt?"
"Oh, Freddy's all right," grunted Cummings, charitably. "All he needs is a jolt. We're doing everything possible for the lad. Digging up Hodges is no crime because the old fellow was a nonentity plus."
"We couldn't have picked a lonelier corpse," chimed in Slater. "He lived like an animal, alone in the woods. There'll be no mourners coming to his grave."
"Yeah, that's the beauty of it," agreed Limerick. "When we put him back no one will be the wiser—except Freddy."
O'Rourke scarcely heard him. He was staring at Cummings as though unable to believe his eyes. Cummings had ceased to grin. The revulsion in his mind had at last undermined his bravado. His face was twitching and he was staring down at the dead man as though transfixed.
It wasn't to be wondered at, really. The yawning grave, the smell of tainted, moldy earth, and the shadowy outlines of tombstones had alone sufficed to terrify O'Rourke. Cummings was made of sterner stuff, but the pinched and sallow face of old Hodges would have struck terror to the heart of a ghoul.
In his cheap, pineboard coffin under the moon he commanded more respect than he had ever commanded in life. His claw-like hands, folded limply on his chest, the charity clothes in which he had been buried and the rough stubble on his cheeks seemed somehow pathetic, horrible—dragging him forth to meet the light worse than a desecration.
Cummings took a cigarette out of his pocket and stuck it in his pale, twitching
