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THE RAT RACE
THE RAT RACE
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA by THE GUINN COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK 14, N. Y. By Jay Franklin When an atomic explosion destroys the battleship Alaska, Lt. Commander Frank Jacklin returns to consciousness in New York and is shocked to find himself in the body of Winnie Tompkins, a dissolute stock-broker. Unable to explain his real identity, Jacklin attempts to fit into Tompkins' way of life. Complications develop when Jacklin gets involved with Tompkins' wife, his red-haired mistress and
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CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 1
When the bomb exploded, U.S.S. Alaska, was steaming westward, under complete radio silence, somewhere near the international date-line on the Great Circle course south of the Aleutian Islands. It was either the second or the third of April, 1945, depending on whether the Alaska, the latest light carrier to be added to American naval forces in the Pacific, had passed the 180th meridian. I was in the carrier, in fact in the magazine, when the blast occurred and I am the only person who can tell ho
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CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
A pretty, dark-haired maid opened the door of "Pook's Hill" with a twitch of the hip that was wasted on Bedford Hills. "Oh, it's you!" She remarked conversationally. "Shall I tell Mrs. Tompkins you are here?" "And why not?" I asked. She looked at me slant-eyed. "Why not, sir? She must have forgotten to eat an apple this morning. That's why." "Where shall I dump my hat and coat, Mary?" I asked guessing wildly at her name. Suburban maids were named Mary as often as not. "The name is Myrtle, Mr. To
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CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
"Winnie!" The voice that crackled at me over the wire had all the implacable tenderness of a woman who has you in the wrong. "Yes, dear!" I answered automatically, with a passing thought for my own lost Dorothy, marooned in Washington with a job in the O.S.S. "What is the matter?" the voice continued, in its litany of angry possessiveness. "What on earth happened to you? I've been waiting for you since three o'clock." "Where have you been waiting?" " Here —of course. In our place. In New York. W
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CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4
After a pleasant breakfast, in the course of which my wife read the social news in the New York Herald-Tribune and I the business news in the New York Times, I excused myself and returned to my bedroom. Winnie's bathroom was fitted with all the gadgets, too, and there was an abundant choice of razors, from the old-fashioned straight-edge suicide's favorite to the 1941 stream-lined electric Yankee clipper. I tried out the scales and found that my involuntary host weighed over 195 pounds—a good de
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CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5
As the door to the room slammed convulsively behind Myrtle, Mrs. Rutherford relaxed, laid the automatic on the sofa between us, and flung back her mink coat. She was an appetizing little number, if you like 'em red-haired, well-developed and mad through and through. Instinctively I started to reach for the gun but was checked by her laugh. "Take it, by all means," she said. "It's not loaded. I only needed it for the maid. Tell me, Winnie, have you got her on your string, too? The maid made or un
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CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6
"Thanks, Jimmie," I replied. "I'm going to try to stay this way." My wife sat down beside me and studied me closely. "You look different," she remarked. "To me, at any rate. You're sort of coming to a focus. If only—. You're so different and—strange." Here was my chance to recover lost ground. "As near as I can make out," I said, "I've had a kind of amnesia. I know you, of course, and my name, and that this is my house and that Ponto is my dog, even though he tried to bite me. I know the Pond Cl
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CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7
Tompkins, Wasson & Cone maintained sincere-looking offices on one of the upper floors of No. 1 Wall Street. The rooms were carefully furnished in dark wood and turkey-red upholstery, in a style calculated to reassure elderly ladies of great wealth that the firm was careful and conservative. The girl at the reception desk looked as though she had graduated with honor from Wellesley in the class of 1920 and still had it—pince-nez and condescension—but she was thoroughly up-to-date in her o
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CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 8
"And so, Arthurjean," I concluded, "my guess is that for some crazy reason it's up to me to take up where Winnie left off and try to do a good job with the hand he's dealt himself." She remained silent, hunched on the floor beside me, with her maroon pyjamas straining visibly and a pile of cigarette butts in the ash-tray at her side. "Give me a break," I pleaded. "When I tried to tell my wife—Winnie's wife—Mrs. Tompkins, that is—all she could think of was to send me off to a plush-lined booby-ha
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CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
"Say, old man, what happened to your hand?" Graham Wasson, plump, dark and fortyish, but very clean-cut and with a Dewey dab on his upper lip, was my questioner. He sat across the glass-topped desk in my Wall Street Office, while Arthurjean Briggs typed demurely in the adjoining office. "Changing razor-blades," I confessed. "The damn thing slipped and before I knew it I made a grab for it. Lucky it didn't go deep. Hence the surgical gauze and the lousy signature. Do you think you can get my chec
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CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10
"Well, there it is, Harcourt," I ended my recitation. "Miss Briggs believes me, my wife doesn't, and I don't expect you to. But if you're interested, I can prove I'm Frank Jacklin any number of ways." The G-Man finished his drink and stared absent-mindedly at the ceiling, while Arthurjean poured him a new shot of Bourbon and water—his fifth. "Mr. Tompkins," he said at last. "I'm drinking your liquor in your house—or Miss Briggs' apartment, whichever it is—and it's not for me to call you a liar."
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CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11
When I entered my office on Monday morning, the genteel receptionist informed me with some austerity that Mr. Roscommon was waiting for me. "Okay, send him in," I directed, bracing myself for what would probably be a stormy interview. If Roscommon was as well-informed as he claimed to be, he must know that I had already reported him to the F.B.I. "Smart work, Tompkins!" he beamed, giving my hand a vise-like squeeze. "Working as I do with the highest echelons, I'm afraid I sometimes forget the va
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CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 12
The phone rang. "Mr. Tompkins?" A girl's voice inquired. "Just a moment, Mr. Willamer of the Securities and Exchange Commission will speak to you." I didn't like that "will." "And who the hell, Arthurjean, is Mr. Willamer of the S.E.C.?" I asked in an aside. "The woiks," she said. "Hullo, Tompkins," a clear phonogenic baritone inquired. "This is Harry Willamer. I saw your list of selling-orders this morning and wondered if you would drop in and see me." "Certainly," I said. "Shall I bring my boo
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CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 13
Merry Vail listened to my account of the encounter with the Inter-Alia gang and then rolled his eyes toward heaven. "Poor old Winnie!" he expostulated. "Why didn't you try something comparatively safe, like robbing a she bear of her whelps or yelling 'Hurray for Hitler' in Union Square? Harry Willamer is a vindictive guy and his aunt or his mother-in-law is related to Jesse Jones. At least that's what the Street believes." "What can he do to me?" I asked. "I have him cold on a charge of blackmai
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CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 14
"If it's going to be long," she said, "we'd both better have a drink. You always think better if you have a glass in your hand." "Now, what is it you want to know?" I answered, after we were comfortably settled in front of the electric fire. "It's—it's just that everything is so queer," Germaine began. "You've changed so that you almost seem like a different person. You even look better, not so flabby, as though you took regular exercise. At least I see a change, and then suddenly I find that yo
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CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
The events which brought me into the office of Edward Lamb, Deputy Director of the F.B.I., on Friday the thirteenth, had developed so rapidly that I could scarcely believe that less than twenty-four hours had passed since Harcourt had taken me into custody. We had gone to the Federal Court House in a taxicab (paid for by me) where I was placed alone in a room for fifteen minutes. At the end of that period I was informed that Washington had asked that I be sent down for direct interrogation at th
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CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 16
After lunch—which was poor, slow and expensive—I screwed up my courage and telephoned the Office of Strategic Services. "May I speak to Mrs. Jacklin?" I asked the switch-board girl. She promptly referred me to Information, who told me that Mrs. Dorothy Jacklin was on Extension 3046, shall-I-connect you? A moment later a pleasant voice said, "Yes? This is Mrs. Jacklin." "Mrs. Jacklin," I told my wife, "my name is Tompkins, W. S. Tompkins. I have a message for you from Commander Jacklin." "Oh," sh
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CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 17
"Name please!" asked the snippy young thing at the Navy Department Reception Desk. "R. L. Grant," I told her. "To see Admiral Ballister. By appointment," I added. "Have you any identification, Mr. Grant?" she inquired. "Of course not. Tell the Admiral that Z-2 has no identification. He will understand." She looked at me very dubiously but dialed a telephone and muttered into it. Suddenly she cackled, "You don't say? Sure! I'll send him right up." She beamed at me. "The Admiral is expecting you,
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CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 18
There is no point in describing the various problems of logistics involved in my reaching General Wakely's office in the Pentagon early on Sunday morning. All the Pentagon stories have been invented and told, including my favorite yarn of the German spy who was told to bomb the building but decided to disobey his orders because there was no point in robbing the Third Reich of its greatest asset. Wakely was a bluff, hearty type of soldier, with more bluff than heart, who greeted me without emotio
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CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 19
"The President will see you now, Mr. Tompkins," said the White House usher, as he beckoned me to follow him. A pleasant, rangy, mild-mannered man rose from behind the great desk and shook my hand. "Glad to see you, Mr. Tompkins," he said. "General Vaughan has been telling me great things about your work. What can I do for you?" As I looked at the guileless, friendly face, my heart sank. Here was one man who should not be deceived. It would be as easy as stuffing a ballot box. "Mr. President," I
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CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 20
There was a brisk knock on the bedroom door. I walked over and opened it, to see F.B.I. Special Agent A. J. Harcourt. He gave me a reproachful glance and pushed his way into the room. "I can only stop a minute, Mr. Tompkins," he said, "but I have orders from the Director to call on you in person and present the apologies of the Bureau for having inconvenienced you. If you had only told us you were connected with Z-2 there would have been no trouble." "Sit down, Harcourt," I urged him. Then I cro
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CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 21
"You were what?" I demanded. "I am—or was—the head of Z-2," Tyler replied. "You know, Mr. Tompkins," he continued, "I find it most intensely interesting that you should have picked on that particular combination—Z-2—for your higher echelonics. In fact, I should like to have you psycho-analyzed, in order to learn why you, of all people, should have selected the super-secret insignia of the super-secret Roosevelt intelligence outfit. Not that it matters now, of course," he added. "With this new gr
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CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 22
The white-coated medical man—he said that he was associate psychiatrist at the Phipps Clinic—beckoned me to follow him into a side-room. He waved me to be seated and closed the door. "You see, Mr. Tompkins," he told me, "everybody's crazy." There is no point in recounting the stages which had converted my panic flight from the wrath of the Secret Service into this interview with one of Johns Hopkins psychiatric staff, except that I had been amazed by the ease with which he had drawn me aside sho
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CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 23
Dr. Rutherford's office was tastefully furnished, in the suburban medical manner, to suggest a Tudor tap-room. There was, of course, a spotless chrome and porcelain laboratory connecting, as well as an equally sanitary lavatory. "Good of you to squeeze me in, Jerry," I remarked to Rutherford. "Fact is I need your professional opinion." Rutherford stroked his little dab of a moustache. "I've sent in my application to the Army Medical Corps," he told me. "I hoped you'd come to straighten out the m
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CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 24
When Dr. Pendergast Potter arrived, he proved to be a short, square-built man, with a red spade beard and soft but shifty brown eyes—like an Airedale's. He had, he told me almost at once, studied with Jung in Vienna and I thought of that mischievous parody— "Dr. Folsom tells me, Mr. Tompkins," Potter continued in a sort of heel-clicking, stiff-bow-from-the-waist manner which was meant, I suppose, to reveal his Viennese training, "that you have reason to believe that your business partners are pl
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CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 25
The grill in the Governor Baldwin was not crowded and we had no trouble getting a pleasant table in the corner, while four colored men blew into metal objects, hit things and delivered themselves of various rhythmic noises. From time to time they paused, in order to allow the perspiring couples who jiggled and writhed on the dancefloor time to cool off. While waiting for Emily Post to appear, Arthurjean was very subordinate, calling me "Mr. Tompkins" and acting, quite as the boss's secretary sho
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CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 26
On the morning of Monday, April 23rd (the date seemed unimportant at the time), I took the early morning train into New York. Spring had done its fell work and the club car was full of middle-aged business-men, with dark circles under their eyes, prepared to fight at the drop of a hat anyone who said they weren't as young as they felt. With Jimmie's perfume still in my nostrils, I hadn't the heart to deride them, so I did the next best thing and talked them into a poker-game. By the time we pull
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CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 27
"What's the big idea?" I demanded. "I thought I was in the clear." Harcourt looked somewhat embarrassed. "Perhaps I oughtn't to tell you this, Mr. Tompkins," he explained, "but like you said, you're in the clear with the Bureau. We've checked and double-checked and any way we slice it, you're still okay. Maybe you're Tompkins with a lapse of memory, maybe this yarn of yours about Jacklin is on the level, but we're sure of you ." "Then why all this interest in me?" I asked. "You've been swell wit
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CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 28
The highly respectable receptionist at the office of Tompkins, Wasson & Cone almost smiled at me. "There are several gentlemen waiting for you, Mr. Tompkins," she announced. "Some of them have been here since before lunch. Do you plan to receive them or shall I ask them to return tomorrow?" "No, I'll see them in a few minutes," I replied. "Miss Briggs will let you know." No sooner had I settled down at my desk, however, than Graham Wasson and Phil Cone came dancing in, wreathed in ticker
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CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 29
"Nonsense!" Germaine said emphatically. Hers was the authoritative tone of a mother assuring her child that the lightning cannot possibly hit the house in a thunderstorm. "I don't see how you can call it nonsense," I told her. "There he stood in my office, a little man with a big Adam's apple, telling me that God was on my track. I'm used to being followed by the F.B.I., but now this!" She stretched out in her chaise longue before the bedroom fire until I thought of the Apostle who stated that t
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CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 30
"No doubt you'll be asking me to reconcile predestination and free will," observed Dr. Angus McGregor, minister of the Tenth Presbyterian Church of Manhattan. "That wasn't quite my question, sir," I replied. "I asked you whether you could justify the Lord's putting my soul into another man's body. Am I to be responsible for the sins the other man committed?" "Ah!" Dr. McGregor remarked, with relish, "It is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. No doubt he kens what he's about. It wil
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CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 31
After I left St. Patrick's-by-the-Gashouse I went to a corner saloon and telephoned the F.B.I. I asked for Harcourt but was told that he was out to lunch, which reminded me that I was hungry. A private treaty with the bartender brought me a steak sandwich, and no questions asked. Apple pie and coffee followed, and were not too horrible. I smoked a cigarette, drank a second cup of coffee, and called the F.B.I. again. This time Harcourt had returned from lunch and he talked as though he had swallo
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CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 32
I walked down Lenox Avenue to the first cigar-store and telephoned the office. As soon as I was connected with Arthurjean I asked her to meet me at her apartment as soon as she could make it. Then I hailed a cab and was driven south through Central Park to the upper east Fifties' and my secretary's apartment. She was waiting. "Gee, honey," she exclaimed. "I just got here. What's cooking?" I followed her in and went straight to the kitchenette. I poured myself a stiff drink and downed it rapidly.
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CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 33
Wednesday, the twenty-fifth, dawned bright and fair. My mind was fully made up and I was feeling fine. Germaine was still anxious about me at breakfast but I soon convinced her that there was nothing serious involved. I laughed secretly as I said it. "You know," I told her, "I think I'll drive over to Hartford and have those people at the Sanctuary look me over again. I think I need some kind of rest—the reaction, you know." My wife raised no objection. In fact, she seemed rather relieved as tho
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CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 34
I was lying down in the kitchen, near the stove, on an old rug which Mary-Myrtle had spread for me. She was really a nice girl. My educated nose informed me that she was kind, young and affectionate. When she entered the room I used to rear up and place my forepaws on her shoulders and lick her ears. She liked me. She used to put her arms around my neck and press against me and give me a smack on the back and a "Go on with you, can't you see I'm busy?" I was lying by the stove when Winnie Tompki
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CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 35
My opportunity to settle the account did not present itself for more than twenty-four hours. Early the following morning, Myrtle was kicked out and crept upstairs. Winnie slammed the door and snored like a hog until ten o'clock—at which time he stamped downstairs and roared for breakfast. After he had eaten, he went to his room again, shutting me outside, and dressed himself carefully in the manly tweeds he had been wearing on that first day in the Pond Club. He drove to the station—I assumed—le
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