10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

the extortionist letters written by Natto. Now the compartment in which he had placed them was empty. A wave of angry heat surged through him as he gripped Mae Gary’s arms. “Palk Y? ““He—he came at me before I knew what was happening!” the girl blurt- ed. “I heard the crash out there, and saw Hunter going down—then he hit me, A masked man—handkerchief across his face—a man in a top-coat. I tried to stop him, but—”’ “Mae! Who was he? You saw him. You’d know him if—” “It happened so fast!” the girl said rushingly. “I didn’t see him clearly. I tried to pull him back—heard some- thing rip, but—I’m sorry, Jack!” “The rat who did this,” Jack Web- ster declared grimly, “is going to be much sorrier !”’ Quick steps in the outer office brought Webster’s assistant, Frank Mayton, toward him. Mayton stared around, appalled, then blurted to Web- ster : “Judge Cheever’s taking the bench to pronounce sentence on Natto. There’s hell popping down there—” “And here!” Webster snapped. “Beat it downstairs, Frank—out this building. Try to find a man in a torn top-coat. He’s got the evidence against Natto. Get after him!” The amazed Mayton rushed from the office. Mae Gary was at the tele- phone now, asking for Inspector Mat- tison, Webster, in the outer office, pulled the broken chair away from Hunter as the deputy struggled up. He examined the ugly welt on Hunter’s head and sent him staggering out for first aid. Webster’s face was a furious red, his temper was flaming, when-he strode back to the safe. “Inspector Mattison,” Mae Gary told him, lowering the phone, “‘is com- ing over.” “Fhat’s the way to handle this!” Webster said with bitter irony. “dust stand by until Mattison saunters into it!” BULLDOG OF JUSTICE—————_—————_13 A quick examination of the safe ver- ified his fears. Four extortionist let- ters, identified as Natto’s handwriting, were not in the compartment nor among the papers scattered over the floor. Another drawer was open but empty; it had contained statements with which Webster hoped soon to convict one Nat Brock on the same charge that had brought a verdict of’ guilty against Natto. Suspicion kin- dled in Webster’s turbulent mind as he .rapidly scanned the papers he picked up. A spot of white on the rug drew his hand. He lifted a tiny white sphere that flaked when his finger- nail dug at it, bringing a pungent odor to his nostrils. “You tore the masked man’s coat,” he thought aloud to the breathless Mae Gary. “Ripped his pocket, probably, and this fell out of it.” The thermometer bracketed outside Webster’s window was registering the first sharp drop of temperature of the fall. It had brought many top-coats out of cedar chests and storage closets. Webster’s own, for the first time this season, hung on the rack behind his desk. Webster peered. at that little white sphere with disgust. “Evidence,” he declared. worthless !” Mae Gary asked: “Why?” “Tt means our masked man got his coat out of storage in such a hurry tonight he didn’t have time to take the mothballs out of it, that’s all. Did you smell anything like this when he hit you?” “Yes,” Mae Gary said it with cer- tainty. Now she was her usual poised, capable self. “I did.” “Whoever was here won’t keep that coat with him now. He'll get rid of it because of the torn pocket. That’s no good. There might be an odor of naph- thalene on him—but where will it be months from now, assuming I man- aged to find him, arrest him, indict him and bring him to trial? You can’t preserve an odor that long—and it “And cComicbooks