10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

= Webster turned startled as a bell rang, On the pane of the entrance he saw a man’s shadow, arm raised to the call button. He started toward it and ordered crisply: “Slip out and watch your door, Teddy. If Brock starts out again, nail him. Careful!” “Tl get that guy!” Brown prom- ised it grimly as he slipped out the back entrance. Jack Webster quickly closed the door of his study as he looked again - at the shadow on the entrance pane. “Careful!” he had warned Ted Brown, and now his head spun with dread. The need for eaution bore upon them both, for Ted Brown was a fugitive from the law, an escaped convict charged with murder. Jack Webster alone held the secret of Brown’s pres- ence in the city. He was the district at- torney who had sent Brown up the river—but the secret was one which would never pass his lips. He was thinking anxiously of the loyal Brown as he looked at the shadow on the door and took slow steps. The bond that held Webster and Brown strongly together was the mutual danger of discovery — the con- stant, hovering threat of the chair for Brown and life imprisonment for Webster. 7 Once Ted Brown had been a co under the orders of Inspector Mattison. He had built up an enviable _ record, then had resigned to accept an offer as detective with a private in- vestigating agency. Working on a case of daring extortion, a dangerous trail had led him to Brock and Natto. Brown’s career had ended abruptly when the grim Inspector Mattison found his fingerprints on the police positive that lay beneath the body of a man shot through the heart. Brown had desperately fought the charge of murder. District Attorney Jack Webster, handling his first homi- cide case, had listened to Brown’s lawyer argue that Brown’s gun had = been stolen to use as a plant, that the henchman of Natto’s, was also an un- derworld foe of Nat Brock. But the attempt to turn suspicion on Brock had ended in failure. Webster’s duty had obliged him to present the fingerprints on the gun as damning evidence, against Brown, though in his heart he had felt a moral certainty that the ex-cop was guiltless. The jury had brought Webster un- wanted victory with a verdict of “Guilty”—a word condemning Brown to the chair. _ Webster remembered, as he ap- proached the door, reading with un- concealed satisfaction the startling newspaper headlines announcing the escape of Ted Brown while on his way to the state prison. He recalled the night when, on one of his investigat- ing prowls among the dives of the city, he had found a bewhiskered vagabond quaking with cold, sickened with hun- ger, huddling behind garbage cans in an alley. Jack Webster had looked at Ted Brown that wretched night, and had seen Thomas Neill, a hunger-tortured fugitive from so-called justice. He had not revealed his discovery to Inspector Mattison because he was convinced of the innocence of the man he had convicted. Secretly he had brought Brown to his home. He had furnished the room above the garage as a haven for the man whom the law was hunting, District Attorney Web- ster had assumed the risk of harbor- ing a fugitive from justice. The pathetically grateful Brown had become Webster’s under-cover partner even while the law hunted him. In secret comradeship with the district attorney who had sent him up the river, Brown was crouched now somewhere in the blackness behind the house—hiding from the danger of dis- covery while at the same time watch- ing a criminal enemy of Webster’s. BSTER pulled the door open, smiled grimly at the fattish face high-lighted against the gloom of the — = : victim, one “Ice” Cling, though a a ¥," oo ws P Ay ity i% ae ae ij x ' pe | shor a Bea ‘ paar: Wc hatShs pee eo 4 tat \ +’ ’ wht whe ry iy ar) 4 f LAs J Wks ali tee: \ ays ea Pee Per eens oh ty i : DB Oy in IA een , Ww . Shu livelve spb wea it te, ray or" ‘ ' Caged, chys i £9 i ty ay +7; « Ps i AD ots @ + ; As PP AAR UTR ATY id Wet Fah toe MARE CL eee