comicbooks.com Join Free

Pulp Fiction, 1938 · page 12 of 116

10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 12: what you’re looking at

📖 Open the full issue in the page-flip reader →
10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 12: Pulp Fiction, 1938

What you’re looking at

This is the opening page of a pulp-fiction detective novel titled "Bulldog of Justice" by Ralph Powers. The page shows story prose rather than illustration, presenting Chapter I: "The Grim Reaper's Verdict." The text describes District Attorney Jack Webster anxiously awaiting a jury's verdict in a case against the criminal defendant Ray Natto, a racketeer and extortionist who has evaded justice through a corrupt lawyer named Herbert Knox. Webster has methodically built his case, and the jury is about to announce whether they will convict Natto of grand larceny under the mandatory "Kernan law."

📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)

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

rr Pe ors = al oe oa aay, eS 5 — . iy selon’ — ~ ~ sx ~~ ae ei Bulldog of Justice : Complete Detective Novel i 3 | | By Ralph Powers g murderer walked from the Hails of Justice. But District Attorney Jack Webster still carried on the fight, bucking the A clever criminal lawyer turned a jury’s verdict—and a | — 5 law and gangdom—for he had his own iron-bound code. = = 2 CHAPTER I had preyed on the city. Natto, — aa : by the crooked connivance of politi- THE Grim REAPER'’S VERDICT cians he had bribed, had defied the ACK WEBSTER, District At- justice of the courts with shrewdly J torney, with quickening heart, planted graft, with crooked bondsmen. watched twelve men file solemnly The shady skill of a powerful trial from the jury room to their places in lawyer, Herbert Knox, had opened one © the judgment box. loophole after another in the law He anxiously studied theinscrutable through which he had wriggled to im- faces of the twelve as the foreman munity—until Jack Webster had de- faced the bench. A strange premoni-_ clared his determination to get Natto. tion of danger tightened his nerves One by one Webster had in- when he heard Judge Crawford dicted, tried and convicted four gravely ask: “Gentlemen of the jury, of Natto’s predatory lieutenants. have’ you reached a verdict?” The Step by step he had fought to- drawn grayness of the jurist’s frm ward the supreme test of forcing face became even more pronounced, justice upon the contemptuous Natto. Webster noted with growing concern, The moment of victory or defeat had as the foreman answered: “We have.” come, after a strenuous week-long The twelve had decided between trial, with the door locked for eighteen =e freedom and life imprisonment forthe hours on the exhausted jury. The ee rat-eyed defendant, Ray Natto. Hisin- greasy-faced, button-eyed extortionist dictment for grand larceny had fol- faced the bench now, as pale and hag- lowed three convictions on minor gard as the distinguished judge who charges. If the foreman of the jury addressed the fateful question to the now pronounced one word, and not jury. two, to convict Natto of a fourth of- Dread filled Webster .that again fense, he faced, under the drastic Natto might elude the law. He had Kernan law, a mandatory sentence of presented documentary evidence, == life imprisonment, proved by expert graphologists to be =P » it meee Aa ye ade i ml at 7 Po aR a aS i A ‘ eo, i the PUNE Yo) ee th? A eda aoe Tot © | ip ra), Yaa Eo 7, i> 8 hee oa OLE Ah Ws Je iy " Last) a. Est ‘ich Hy id: Lo in m, ; Aner eae , he mUyur. sok Ly 0 “What is your verdict, gentlemen in Natto’s handwriting, letters de- of the jury?” manding blood money. The defense’s The moment speeded Webster’s countermove was thetestimony of wit- pulse because it was the crisis of his ness after witness that Natto was else- long months of grim endeavor to whereonthenighthehadactuallymet stamp out the scourge of asevila ring Howard Brandon, broker, in a public of extortionists and racketeers asever park with a demand for one hundred 10 “ ko aoe z ae x . e - <n ao $e 2 Se a ht Cpe Se RR ee ea ee : a Een = oe eee — Si # , or ’ La", { >A) eA } Oks Paaee t y ? ‘ \ } ; \