10-Story Detective Magazine, April 1946 — page 62: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 —_—_—_—__—_—__—_—10-STORY DETECTIVE through my coat pocket and makes a mess out of a pack of butts. The broad makes a spirited attempt tc perform an autopsy on me with the shiv, but the artist brings a palette down over her noggin and com- pletes a masterpiece of first degree as- sault. Louie has recovered and begins to dem- onstate the art of Judo. One of the go- rillas goes out through a window and Jands on a fire escape. The third dishonest citizen proves very hard to handle. I am sure he served as a bouncer in every low dive from Naples . to Marseilles. He can box without using his hands which fools Louie. Louie catches the toe of a boot on the point of his chin and is disappearing behind a davenport just as the rough hoy charges me, “Help!” I howl at the painter, but he has fainted. The dame has picked up her marbles, but is throwing something much more effective at me. It is two bottles, one full and one empty. The empty one misses me by the width of a butterfly’s wing. The full one slips out of the doll’s hand, hits the ceiling, and comes down on the gorilla’s pate. The case-hardened gee lets loose a tired sigh and collapses like a punctured football. Louie climbs over the back of the dav- enport. “Alvin, you knocked the gorilla as cold as a Russian steppe in January,” he exclaims. “Boy, I got to shake hands with you. Imagine it, you did # your- self!” “Oh, it wa’n’t nothin’,” I says. “Let’s be sure these crooks are manacied, huh? Grab the paintin’, Louie. You still have the flake of old paint come off, huh? We'll give the old bag back her right headlight!” “I can’t git over it, Alvin,” Louie says and pauses to take an inventory of his teeth with a forefinger. “I never forget that piteher Doozie gimme, An’ them ear- rings the chick wears. Little gold lizards or somethin’ they look like. Or could they be baby armadillers? You never know what you git on a blind date, huh? No- body ever had one he saw less of until recently, Alvin.” “Let’s call some more cops,” I says, as I notice the babe is beginning to stir. “I would not be surprised if characters like _ these were mined. | will take no more ehances with them.” When the doll is rational once more we tell her she might as well confess, The knife was in her stocking and all. “T went there an stole the paintin,” she snaps. “But it was the @herub who knifed the old goat. I can prove it by showing you flatfeet where he ditched the shiv!” Then she tapses into Italian which I do not understand, but which Louie does. “She is cussing us out something wicked, Alvin,” he says. When we get to the precinct house, we meet Hambone Noonan coming. out of the cell room. Noonan is rubbing the palms of his hands together and is grin- ning like a hyena in front of a slaughter- house. “Well, Pll make Chitney confess offi cially in the mornin’,” he says. “Where you dopes been? Who is them people you got han’cuffed? 1 s’pose you two came upon a family street scuffle—” “It is only the robbers who took the paintin’, Hambone,” Louie says. “This Cherub here is the one that swung the shiv that shunted Quirk into the shad- ows. He told it all to a stenog we roused out of bed. We have the rubout weapon all wrapped up in this hanky of mine, Noonan.” = | “I don’t see why things happen to me like they do,” Hambone chokes out. ‘“‘Why would Chitney confess he did it after you an’ Alvin left, if he didn’t do it, Loule?” “Huh, that is simple, even if it is un- believable,” Louie Garfunkle says. “He figured maybe Lucretia did it. He wished to save her as he was in love with her.” “Wha-a-t? Nothin’ like that could hap- | pen, Louie,” Noonan yelps. “Oh, but it could—just to me. A love match like that could happen once in ten centuries, just to spite me, I ought to just give up.” I sigh deeply as Hambone Noonan drops his thick noggin into his hands and stares at the floor like a citizen outside a maternity ward. “When do you leave for Camp Dix?’ I ask. “Tomorrer. But I'll be back very soon, Alvin. I have a hundred and six points.” I know I shouldn’t feel like I do, but I find myself wishing Louie Garfunkle had only about seven points and was sched- uled for the army of oceupation in Japan. It is just that I do not feel sure of much future. COnniGoooks (CO)