10 Story Detective, July 1942 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

————CRIME ON HIS HANDS about her that I liked. I guess I was foolish, but it was an impulse and I] gave way to it. Instead I said: “I think his name was Kenyon, a iall chap with a military mustache. There was a woman here with him. i didn’t get much of a look at her. I came in and said that I’d like to talk to Uncle Henry and then I saw him on the floor.” “What happened?” Hallock eoted: “IT don’t know. I think Kenyon hit me and knocked me out.” “How do you know his name was Kenyon?” That almost got me. My chest gave a thump, but I guess I concealed my confusion pretty well because he gave no sign of having noticed anything. I said: “I’d seen his picture in the papers. I knew his wife was going with my uncle.” “When did you get into New York, Donald?” . I wondered how he knew my name and then I saw my wallet in his hand. He also had the letter Uncle Henry had written to me about the twelve nundred dollars I’d tried to borrow. I told him the truth because he could easily check up on it. “Only this afternoon,” I said. “I got m on the two o’clock train.” “And you came straight here?” ‘“No, sir. I visited some relatives in Brooklyn first.” Hallock pursed his lips and aiched @ police photographer take a flash of Uncle Henry. A dapper little man was dusting powder around the furni- ture and I guessed he was taking fin- gerprints. CHAPTER III HE man who’d held the ammonia bottle to my nose came away from Uncle Henry and handed Hal- lock a printed sheet of paper. “Here’s the D. O. A. form,”’ he said. “Killed instantly from a blow on the head.” I was to learn later that D.O.A. simply meant Dead On Arrival. Hal- 47 lock glanced at the letter again and then looked up at me. His black eyes were bright. “You were trying to borrow twelve hundred dollars from your uncle, eh, Donald ?”’ “That’s right, sir. You see, we had a bad crop last season. No crop at all, really. First there was the frost and then—” “Yeah.” He cut me atiote “Just skip all that, Donald. People always have a motive for borrowing money. From this letter it seems that you were hav- ing trouble. Your uncle didn’t want to lend it to you, eh?” “Well, that’s what he wrote in the New York and explained it to him he’d change his mind. Twelve hundred dollars isn’t very much to a man like Uncle Henry. He’s very—” “Yeah.” Hallock had soft thick lips and he pushed them out thought- fully. “And now that he’s dead, Don- ald, I guess you'll get all his money.” I felt my head jerk up. I glanced at him with a kind of shock. That thought had never really entered my mind. You see, I couldn’t really belteve that Uncle Henry was dead. I mean this thing was sort of a nightmare. And then suddenly it came home to me. Gosh! I was rich! Really rich. Be- yond anything I’d ever dreamed. It gave me a queer feeling. “Well,” I gulped, “there’s my cousin Ethel. We’re his only two living rela- tives.” There was a strange silence in the room. Hallock was standing in front of me, with his heavy red neck inched out of a limp soiled shirt, watching me with those eyes of his, as black as mid- night. The other men in the room were grouped around me, all staring at me with a peculiar silent intensity. Their faces were grim, hard-jowled. And then my stomach did a flip- over. It just squeezed tight and con- tracted and jolted over upside down. I saw the whoie thing now. I saw it plain as daylight. I knew what they were thinking. That maybe Uncle ' letter, sir. But I was sure if I came to | AA (ee () Doo S (C(O) nn