And a laminated reduced photostat of an Army discharge.
And a Social Security card.
He looked at the cards for a long while, and then he set them down gently on the floor, all in a row, and put the wallet down beside them, and he made a careful search of the suitcase.
There were only two things of interest in the suitcase, two large manila envelopes. In one of them were four letters, the sum total of the correspondence between the dead driver and the producer of the summer theater, in which the driver had been hired for the season. And in the other was a batch of glossy large black-and-white photographs of the dead driver in an actorish pose, arms crossed and head tilted, looking very dramatic, with dramatic lighting effects in the background. Scotch-taped to the back of each photo was a mimeographed resume of the dead driver’s theatrical career.
The madman smiled and laughed and nodded his head, and affectionately patted the cheek in the photographs, because all at once he knew what he would do. He would take the dead driver’s place. He would go on to that summer theater, and he would be safe there until the end of August, and then he would decide what to do next.
Could it be done?
The madman cocked his head to one side, and touched a fingertip to his chin. Sitting cross-legged amid the dead driver’s effects, a faint smile on his face, he looked like a child beneath the tree on Christmas morning, having been asked by a kindly uncle with which toy he intends to play first, and trying pleasurably to decide on an answer.
And could it be done?
He thought back to things the driver had told him: This was the driver’s first season at this particular summer theater. He knew no one else who’d been hired, nor did he know the producer.
But there would be a photograph. One of the glossy photographs with the résumé on the back. The driver would have sent it when he applied for the job.
The madman sucked on his lower lip between his teeth, and squinted at the darkness in the dining-room archway. Could he be clever? Could he overcome the problem of the picture?
What if it was the wrong picture?
“Why, I must have sent you the wrong picture,” the madman said aloud, smiling. “That’s my roommate’s picture. We were both sending out pictures at the same time and I must have sent you his picture by mistake.”
Was that possible? Yes, of course, but would it be believed?
What if he got more pictures like it? Tomorrow morning he could go down to the nearest city, and go to a photographer, and have the photographer take pictures of himself in the same style as these pictures of the dead driver. Then he could switch the résumés to the new pictures, and give one of them to the producer to take the place of the wrong picture in his files.
If he had legitimate-looking pictures, and all the right cards, wouldn’t they have to believe him? They wouldn’t even consider the possibility that he wasn’t what he seemed.
Unless they already knew the driver was dead.
Would they know that? The summer theater was over four hundred miles from here, in another state. The dead man’s home was three hundred miles in the opposite direction, and in a different state altogether.
Besides, it would take them a while to find out who the driver was. The car was all blown up, and the madman had the driver’s identification papers.
But it would mean that he would have to act, have to be in plays all summer. Could he do that? He didn’t have any experience in that at all.
But he did have a good memory, an excellent memory. There was a heightened clarity in his mind, because not all of it was functioning, and so the part that was working had more concentrated power. He had a really magnificent short-range memory. He tended to forget things after a month or two, forgetting much more completely than a normal mind, but to the same extent he remembered recent things with more sharpness and detail than a normal mind.
So he wouldn’t have trouble learning parts in plays. And he could remember a lot of what the driver had told him about himself.
But would he be able to act well enough to fool them? Could he convince them he was an actor?
Well, wasn’t acting simply being clever? He had consciously trained himself in being clever. Surely he was more clever than the driver had been, because he had seen the driver’s intentions at once but the driver hadn’t known he knew until it was too late.
He nodded to himself. He would at least try it. At the worst, they would decide he was a bad actor and they would fire him. There was no real risk of exposure, if only he remembered to be clever, to lie and make believe and fool them.
The driver had told him he was due at the theater on Wednesday. This was Monday night. So he had all day tomorrow to get the pictures taken and to think about his plan and see if there were any problems he’d overlooked.
But now his original idea had to be changed. He couldn’t stay here till morning. He had to leave as soon as possible, and be in the city by morning, so he could find a photographer.
He scrambled to his feet, closed the suitcase, and carried it upstairs with him. He went into the bathroom and stripped and took a quick hot shower and then dressed again, in the driver’s clothes. The shirt and suit coat fit perfectly, but the trousers were too tight around the waist. He left the button open, with the belt concealing the V opening. The shoes were too large, but that was all right. A lot better than being too small.
When he was washed and shaved and dressed, he closed the suitcase again, left it in the hall, and went into the bedroom where the bodies were. He found the key ring in the old man’s right-hand pants pocket, and then carried the suitcase downstairs. He picked up the wallet and cards, put them all together again, and stowed the wallet in his hip pocket. Then he looked at the old man’s keys, and smiled happily when he saw the silver key with GM on it. An automobile ignition key. Still smiling, he left the house.
He found the car, a five-year-old Chevrolet, parked beside the garage. He dropped the suitcase on the back seat and slid behind the steering wheel.
It had an automatic gearshift, which was a good thing. It had been a long, long time since he had driven a car, and most of his knowledge of driving had faded with the rest of his older memories. But with an automatic gearshift, he would be all right.
Nevertheless, he drove very jerkily at first, and it was a good thing there weren’t any other cars on the road. It took him about ten minutes to get used to the accelerator and brake, but finally he got the car under control.
Once the car was running the way it was supposed to, he had leisure to remember that he had neglected to get the money from the garage cash register. He got angry at himself for that, and pounded his fist on the steering wheel. But he didn’t want to go back. The forty-three dollars would have to last him. When it was gone, he could always get some more.
The narrow blacktop road wound among the hills for a long time, and finally deposited him in a small town where he found a turn-off that took him to a divided highway, the same one he’d been on before. The place where he’d killed the actor was about fifteen miles back the other way.
He drove all night, too excited to feel tired, and at eight-thirty in the morning he came to a medium-sized city and found a photographer’s shop, where the owner was just opening for business. He went in, carrying one of the dead man’s pictures, and said, “Can you make me some pictures just like that?”
The photographer looked at the picture and said, “Sure. You an actor?”
“Yes. How fast can you make them?”
“I should be able to have them ready by Thursday.”
“Oh, no! This morning.”
“This morning? Listen, I’ve got too many rush orders as it is. I’ve got a one-man operation here, my friend, and I—”