The Trojan Hearse (Shell Scott )
by Richard S. Prather[ Mystery ]
With a national election going on, Shell Scott's timing might have been less than perfect. Perhaps he did prevent the victory for the shoo-in candidate, but a lot of strange things were happening. There was Polly Plank whom he encountered in her psychiatrist's office in her birthday suit. What about the American singing idol, Johnny Tray, who turned up dead? And of course Joe Rice, leader of the West's underworld, who also wanted Shell under the world too--six feet under!
CHAPTER ONE
They dug up Johnny Troy that day.
Buried him--then dug him up.
They rioted in the graveyard, a thousand of them or more. They tore at the still-soft earth with shovels and hands and clawing fingers. They lifted his coffin from the earth and rolled it over the grass.
Then they took his body out of the casket and tried to tear it limb from limb. They pounded him and hacked him, ripped his flesh, broke his bones and gouged out both his eyes. There was very little left to bury--or rebury--when they were through with Johnny Troy.
Then they went to the polls and voted.
Because they did all that to Johnny Troy on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, in the year of our Supreme Court, 1968. That's right, 1968, the year and the day of the Presidential elections which were to zoom us out of the muddle ages into the Secure Seventies. Johnny had been dead for three days then, and thus was dead as hell, but that wasn't enough for the people. Because he had been their idol.
They had loved him "with a love that was more than love."
So, naturally, now they hated him with a hate that was more than hate.
Hell hath no fury like a nation screwed, and the nation had been screwed by Johnny Troy; at least, he was the symbol of the screwing. The people didn't know it, though, until that day when they hacked him into little pieces. They probably wouldn't know it yet if somebody hadn't told them.
Who told them?
Me.
I told them.
