The Adventures of a Professional Corpse by H. Bedford-Jones

Book Details

The Adventures of a Professional Corpse – four stories of a man who will die for you —for a fee.

The Artificial Honeymoon (1940) – The secret of one of the strangest professions in the world.
The Blind Farmer and the Strip Dancer (1940) – One man finds that death is at a premium, and that dying brings big dividends.
The Wife of the Humorous Gangster (1940) – There’s good money in dying. It is surprising how many people can make use of a dead man.
The Affair of the Shuteye Medium (1941) – He certainly took a dive when he invaded the spirit world!

Henry James O’Brien Bedford-Jones (1887-1949) was born in Napanee, Ontario, Canada in 1887. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime novels and pulp magazine stories. Bedford-Jones was an enormously prolific writer; the pulp editor Harold Hersey once recalled meeting Bedford-Jones in Paris, where he was working on two novels simultaneously, each story on its own separate typewriter.

He wrote over 100 novels, earning the nickname “King of the Pulps”.

Bedford-Jones became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908. He died on May 6, 1949 (aged 62) in Beverly Hills, California.

The Adventures of a Professional Corpse has 4 illustrations.

Files:

1. Bedford-Jones-AdventuresOfAProfessionalCorpse.epub

Excerpt: The Artificial Honeymoon

The secret of one of the strangest professions in the world.

FOR twelve years I’ve earned an honest living in a strange, perhaps a horrible fashion. Nobody in the world has ever before followed my profession.

James F. Bronson is the name. I’ve played a chief part in the most dramatic situations, the most pitiful and heart-rending situations, which the human brain could conceive; and in each case I’ve been quite oblivious to all that went on. For, during these twelve years, I’ve been a professional corpse—a walking dead man.

You may possibly have noticed the advertisement I’ve run in newspapers from time to time, all over the country. You may have wondered what it meant. It was quite discreetly worded. From the very beginning I’ve tried to guard against any connection with crooked enterprise. As appears in the instance of the Shuteye Medium. I didn’t always succeed; and elsewhere I may have been imposed upon; but to the best of my knowledge I’ve never been employed toward the harm of anyone, or in contravention of the law.

Here’s a sample of my advertisement:

Personal!—It is possible to simulate death, as I can demonstrate to interested parties. Endorsement of medical profession, absolute discretion. All work confidential but must be legal and subject to closest investigation. News Box B543.

Had I been unscrupulous, I could have amassed a fortune through this blind ad. Each time it appeared, I’ve received tempting offers, some frankly illegal and others with some illegal aspect in the background. I’ve never accepted one of these offers.

In relating a few of my most remarkable experiences, I must protect my own identity and that of my clients; otherwise, no details will be changed or hidden. For example, in the story of the blind farmer and the strip dancer, the lady concerned is now an internationally known movie star. It would be a dastardly act even to hint at her identity. Nor do I want to do myself out of a job. Despite the thirty-one times I have been pronounced dead, and the seven times I’ve actually been buried, I am still in pursuit of shoes for the baby.

Before taking up my first case, the curious account of the artificial honeymoon, let me briefly sketch my history and the discovery of my singular ability.

I was born on a farm in western Canada, and had a fair education, with two years of college, before my father died and the family went broke. After drifting around and never noticing anything extraordinary about myself, I came back to the farm at the age of twenty-three, to support the women folks. I was broke. We were all broke.

I had an uncle who was also a drifter. He had been in South America, and turned up one fine day with a trunk full of junk, a lot of wild stories, and a cough that killed him two months later.

He had brought from Ecuador two tiny, shrunken human heads, the size of a billiard ball. He sent these off to a museum and the money helped to bury him. Among other things he had a bottle made from a gourd and filled with liquid, which he said was a sacred drink used by the Indians in Ecuador to produce dreams. He expected to make money out of it, but died before he could get anywhere with his schemes.

After his death I was going through his effects, hoping to find something that we might sell, for we had bitter need of money.

I came on the gourd bottle and did what only a young fool would do: I sampled it. Pouring out some of the stuff I tasted it. As it seemed harmless and I was curious to see what dreams it would produce, I swallowed the whole dose.

It burned like fire. I became rapidly drowsy, and frightfully scared. I stumbled downstairs, told the folks what I had done, yelled that I was poisoned, and then keeled over, dead to the world.

It seemed that I really was dead. Naturally skinny and none too strong, I must have looked terrible. They said that my lips were really blue.

The doctor came the six miles from town in record time. He took one look at me, put his stethoscope to my chest, felt for my pulse, and said I was dead. He stuck a pin in me, and was sure of it. He hauled open my shirt and ran his fingernail over my abdomen, and there was no reflex. Then he turned up my eyelid, held a mirror to my nose, and changed his mind at once.

“Hello! Something queer about this; he’s breathing. And his pupil’s not dilated,” he exclaimed. “Where’s that stuff he took? Where did it come from? What is it?”

NOBODY had the answers, of course. Neither did he, but he was a shrewd man. He gave me a very careful examination, and presently slid an injection into me. It was, as he told me later, a fortieth grain of atropine and caffeine sodium benzoate. This brought me around. Had it not been for the eye-pupil and the mirror test, he would have buried me.

My only sensation was of having been asleep, and I had no ill effects. Some days later he told me in plain words what a damned young fool I was, and what was amiss with me.

Excerpt From: H. Bedford-Jones. “The Adventures of a Professional Corpse.”