Startling Mystery Stories #13

# Startling Mystery Stories Magazine Content

This issue features three distinct narratives. "The Gray Killer" by Sarah Quarrell presents a hospital-set mystery, narrated through Marion Wheaton's diary (November 15-28, 1928). A young boy patient has been murdered, his throat nearly severed, with his body discovered at a skylight. The narrative develops through interrogation and confession, with a mysterious killer characterized by unusual feet and methods of evading law enforcement, ultimately involving Jack Rossiter confronting a figure wearing a gray sock mask in a derelict building.

"Where There's Smoke..." concerns Hubert Whipple, a successful but dissolute billboard painter with gambling debts and a mistress, who becomes consumed with artistic ambition.

"Ancient Fires" by Seabury Quinn presents Jules de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge investigating a haunted estate called Redgables in 1926. A lawyer offers ten thousand dollars to solve supernatural manifestations. The investigators witness an ethereal apparition—a barely visible dancing figure with tinkling ankle bells—appearing in moonlight before vanishing. A subsequent nocturnal encounter results in a climactic death as an intruder falls from a window.