10 Story Detective, July 1942 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

42—— It was a new mortgage and I’d tak- en it out only last winter. You see, Ethel—she’s a ceusin of mine—want- ed me to buy out her share. Although she’d never lived on the farm she’d inherited through grandfather. And that’s why I had taken out a mort- gage, the first one in fifty years. I guess you can see how much I thought of the farm. I loved that piece of ground. I loved tilling the fields and fixing the old barns and seeing the corn push up out of the soft earth, corn yellower than a newly minted gold piece. I didn’t want to lese it. I’d rather have lost my—my arm, I guess. I got everything unpacked and then I called Uncle Henry on the phone. His office said that he wouldn’t be back at all that day, but I could prob- ably reach him at home in the evening. New York is a pretty big place and there were a lot of things I wanted to see. But I didn’t get to see any of them. Instead I went to Brooklyn to call on my cousin Ethel and her hus- band. I hadn’t seen Ethel ever since she was a kid in pigtails. She didn’t have pigtails any lenger and she wasn’t gangly. Being married to Sam Fisher agreed with her, She’d gotten pretty fat. Sam was a big fellow with closely cropped blond hair that stuck about an inch straight up from his head. He had a square chin and blue eyes and worked for some chemical firm out on Long Island. We chinned for about an hour un- til it got dark and I told them all about the farm and how things were going. sam said: “Come out and have din- ner with us tomorrow.” I shook my head. “I wish I could, but I’ve got to catch the train back to Nebraska. That hired man of mine is liable to go off on a drunk and neglect the cattle. I’ll write to you, though.” When I took the subway back to Manhattan I didn’t know how wrong I'd been. Sure, I’d planned on going home the following day. But I didn’t. 10-STORY DETECTIVE—_——__—___— They wouldn’t let me. The cops, I mean. NCLE HENRY lived on Park Avenue. That’s a pretty swell street. Block after block of big fine houses, all of them with doormen in gaily colored uniforms. This house Uncle Henry lived in was about forty stories high. It made you dizzy to look at it. “Mr. Henry Lambert,” I said to the elevator man. “He’s expecting me.” He wasn’t really. I just thought I’d surprise him. That elevator ride up to the twen- tieth floor made my stomach feel like churned butter. I guess my face was a little green when I pushed the bell. Anyway I had a long wait before a tiny bronze disk at eye level jerked up and an eye looked out at me. It was a green eye. Or maybe it was topaz. Or even a mixture of the two. It stared out at me for a couple of seconds and then the disc swung back and that was all. The door didn’t open. So I stuck my finger against the bell and way inside I could kear some mut- ed bells. It wasn’t a ring at all. Suddenly the door opened and there was this girl standing there and star- ing at me. “Go away, please,” she said, and started to slam the door in my face. It surprised me because she didn’t look like that kind of a gir! at all. I thrust my foot inside the jamb and she couldn’t shut the door. She fell back a step and plugged the fingers of her left hand into her mouth. She made a kind of choked little cry deep inside her throat. I couldn’t understand it. Maybe I’m not the best looking fellow in the world, but I certainly don’t look like Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi. Anyway, girls didn’t usually look like they’d seen a nightmare when I appear. I said: “I’m Mr. Lambert’s nephew, Donald. I’d like to see him.” We were in kind of a hallway, a square room with statues against the wall. I hastily averted my eyes from MIGOOOo (C(O) S (C(O) im